One of my most anticipated films of 2012 is director Ruben Fleischer’s (Zombieland) 1940s crime thriller Gangster Squad, and today a pretty cool image has surfaced: stars Sean Penn and Josh Brolin squaring off. Penn plays gangster Mickey Cohen, and the film centers on the Los Angeles task force assembled to bring him to justice. Brolin plays the head of the so-called “Gangster Squad”, surrounded by an impressive ensemble that includes Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, Nick Nolte, Michael Peña, Anthony Mackie, and Giovanni Ribisi.

Fleischer recently spoke at length about the project, and you can see what he had to say along with the new image after the jump. Gangster Squad opens October 19th, 2012.

In an interview with EW, Fleischer revealed the basic premise for the flick:

“O’Mara (Josh Brolin), our lead character, has just come back from fighting the Nazis with all these ideals after seeing America at its greatest. And he’s come home and there’s a gangster running his city. While he was gone, Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) took over and he turned the streets of L.A. into a battle zone. In our story, O’ Mara takes the lead of the Gangster Squad, a vigilante police force that fights the gangsters on their own terms, and the battle between them is for the future of Los Angeles: whether it’s going to become corrupt and run by this bunch of gangsters or these guys who fought for these values and want L.A. to be the shining beacon on the west coast that it was always intended to be.”

The director also spoke a bit about Gosling’s character, who’s a little more rough around the edges than Brolin:

“Ryan’s character also went to war, but when he came back, he was a little disillusioned. So he’s more on the fence, hanging out in nightclubs and hanging out with guys who might be gangsters. He’s less clear on where he stands in terms of standing up against Mickey Cohen. But he finds himself in a love triangle with Cohen and Emma Stone’s femme fatale character.”

If the cast and behind-the-scenes talent wasn’t enough, the interactions between these characters sounds pretty engrossing. It’s Fleischer’s first stab at a big-budget studio picture, so I’m hoping the finished film turns out to be as great this all sounds.

Here’s the new image:

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