Decked in a tailored suit and fedora, armed with a switchblade, Anthony Mackie’s got so much swagger in his new film Gangster Squad, he nearly forgot he wasn’t actually an undercover, mob-hunting policeman.
“I kept stabbing myself,” the 34-year-old actor tells theGrio about shooting scenes as his character Officer Coleman Harris in the movie, hitting theaters today. “He was a hard-nosed cop. He would sit around all day, and just play with his switchblade.”
Set in 1949 Hollywood, Gangster Squad is a story based on actual events spanning the city of Los Angeles at the time, a glamorous boomtown that blankets an underworld of crime, drug trafficking and prostitution run by mafia kingpin Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn). As Cohen’s influence grows stronger, a team of men, including Mackie’s character along with other real-life figures played by Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Michael Pena, Giovanni Ribisi and Robert Patrick, is assembled to destroy the mob operations.
According to Mackie, Harris was about more then mere combat skills, he was a man on a mission to tackle the underworld beneath him; a guy set on redemption, which was a major big drawing point to this role.
“It’s not so often you get to play three-dimensional characters,” Mackie explains. “[Harris] talks about saving his neighborhood, and losing his niece, and everything that makes him want to join the squad. Then, you see how flawed he is because once he joins the squad, he does certain things to where, morally, it’s not the right thing to do. But he’s very smart about using the streets against the streets.”
The film plays on classic noir aesthetics, a reversion to 1950s dramatics and expressionist compositions. The characters, dialogue, and setting all seems to pay homage to their prototypes, those movies and starlets from the era of Orson Welles, Howard Hughes and Billy Wilder.
“Being a gangster then was all about style and charisma,” notes Mackie. “If you look at these guys like Bugsy Siegel, Mickey Cohen, Al Capone, they were celebrities. And the newspapers and the news made them celebrities. And when they came out of the houses, they wore tailored suits and everything was about presentation. Everything was about letting people know that you were the guy that wasn’t supposed to be messed with…Back then, you knew you were the coolest guy in the room.”
Mackie’s character fills a void he says he often inhabits – “the black guy in the movie” – yet the value of Harris’ character and significance in the story cannot be disputed. Harris is a man hell-bent on defending his neighborhood and people, hoping to restore life to the community. At the same time, he is a product of that struggling mentality. Though he’s managed to overcome his mental iniquities, one of his greatest strengths is his ability to outwit his opposition through techniques he’s learned on the city block. Thus, it’s the strength of his background that makes him an asset to this collective.
“When you think of Enemy of the State, when you think of L.A. Confidential, when you think of The Untouchables, you never get to see the story of black America in the ‘40s and ‘50s, and that was a huge time of progression for us as a people,” Mackie comments. “We’re coming off the heels of Joe Louis, of Jesse Owens, Muddy Waters. That was our time of growth and shine and that’s what kicked into the Civil Rights Movement…[Harris] knew the beauty of a day of hard work and how it would pay off. That’s something that I wanted to bring to the screen.”
To understand the place in time, Mackie did what he always does – listened to music of the decade. He says he “defines” all his characters in this fashion. For this role in particular, he found himself drawn to the work of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, a musician he describes as “amazing,” and the “most talented woman at that time.” Tharpe was a gospel singer, pioneer, and rock n’ roll purveyor, and it was the stirring of her chords that set Mackie’s pace in the movie.
“She was looked at as a freak of nature because she was always the most talented woman,” he remarks. “All of the language and stereotypes that were put before her, she knocked down and became a world renown figure.”
Likewise, Mackie feels this movie tells the story of his culture that isn’t commonly depicted. While he’s portrayed a wide gamut of characters in the historical African-American experience throughout his career, Gangster Squad represents something new about an age of revival, encouragement and confidence.
“There’s just the story of pride,” he comments. “Black people were so proud. They were so proud coming out of the war, and that pride was something that I held onto.”
This year, Mackie, who also starred in the Academy Award-winning movie, The Hurt Locker, will begin filming another big-budget action flick, Captain America 2, and is rumored to be appearing in the follow-up to the Avengers. Despite his rising success as an action star, he says he’s still keeping his projects diverse, and points to the more story-driven and independent pictures coming out this year as examples.
For Gangster Squad, nevertheless, Mackie seems to have enthusiastically embraced his inner legionnaire once again, touting combat mentality, agility and tommy guns in nearly every scene. Though he loves to taunt Gosling, his friend and two-time co-star, with salacious pet names like “petit four,” “hot fudge sundae,” and “vanilla mocha fudge blossom,” Mackie’s says conversely, the same cannot be said about him.
He jokes, “I’m too tough for a nickname.”
Follow Courtney Garcia on Twitter at @courtgarcia