Josh
Brolin was in the Cito Rats surf gang and now stars in Gangster Squad.
Picture: Jason Merritt/Getty Images Source:
National Features
Peter Mitchell, The Daily Telegraph, reports
It is no surprise that the first words from Josh Brolin's lips when he thinks of Australia are "Bra Boys".
Brolin is one of Hollywood's genuine tough guys, often playing bare-knuckled brawlers in films and off the set he creates headlines for the wrong reasons - including a recent New Year's Eve arrest for public intoxication in Santa Monica. "You have your Bra Boys, we have our Cito Rats," Brolin says, smiling.
The 44-year-old son of actor James Brolin and stepson of Barbra Streisand was a child star; his first big role was in the classic 1985 family movie The Goonies.
But away from the studio lots he was an avid surfer and member of the Cito Rats, a notorious surf gang in the 1970s and '80s, based at Montecito, California, near Santa Barbara.
When Brolin watched the documentary film Bra Boys: Blood is Thicker than Water, which follows the Sydney surf gang out of Maroubra, it stirred up memories from his days with the Cito Rats.
He has never been to Australia, but wants to travel Down Under to meet the Bra Boys. "There is a connection there I want to explore," Brolin says.
The violent Gangster Squad, set in seedy Los Angeles in 1949, is another vehicle to display Brolin's brawn. The actor plays LAPD Sgt John O'Mara, a World War II hero who is selected to head a secret unit to take on mob boss Mickey Cohen.
The story is based on former LA Times editor Paul Lieberman's non-fiction book Gangster Squad. "(O'Mara's) a guy who has just got back from battle in World War II and he is carrying that with him," Brolin says of his character.
In one scene, O'Mara and Cohen (Sean Penn), a former boxing champ, stand toe-to-toe in a bare-knuckle fight.
Brolin, whose recent films include True Grit, American Gangster and No Country for Old Men, loved trading punches with Penn, even if a couple of fists connected on his own chin.
-- SEE Gangster Squad is now showing.
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