9. Sean Penn as Mickey Cohen – Gangster Squad
Los Angeles gangster Mickey Cohen was part of the Jewish Mafia with very strong ties to the Italian American Mafia. His reign of violence was between the 1930s and the 1960s. In 1939, after he was released from prison for being involved in the murder of several men during a bad card game, he set up the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas. A few years into the operation, members of another crime family ordered that the hotel manager and mobster, Benny “Bugsy” Siegel, be killed after they believed that he was skimming money. Cohen did not take well to the murder and he entered the Hotel Roosevelt firing rounds from a .45 caliber semi-automatic handgun into the ceiling and demanded that Siegel’s assassins fight him outside. SEE ALSO: 10 Shocking facts about Snoop Dogg (With Pictures)
This and many other violent activities were bought to the attention of state and federal authorities and they began investigating Cohen and his associates. After Cohen’s mansion on Moreno Avenue was attacked by a bomb, he turned his home into a secure fort by installing floodlights, alarm systems and hired close-protection bodyguards. Despite his notorious criminal activity, Cohen was sentenced to just four years in prison for tax evasion in 1951.
Gangster Squad also stars Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone and Giovanni Ribisi.Although the movie did not win favourable reviews, Sean Penn dominates the rest of the cast with the twisted and vicious persona of Mickey Cohen. He gives a haunting speech during one scene at a restaurant where he discusses a murder he was involved in. He ruthlessly claims, “That wasn’t murder, that was progress. I am progress.”
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