Anthony Mackie gets 'Gangster' in new film

Anthony Mackie gets 'Gangster' in new film

Jamie Trueblood

Michael Pena as Officer Ramirez and Anthony Mackie as Officer Harris in 'Gangster Squad'

Anthony Mackie does gangster well.

So it wasn’t much of a stretch for for the 34-year-old actor to play Officer Coleman Harris in the 1940s mob movie “Gangster Squad,” opening Friday.

“I have been described as gangster,” says Mackie while getting his ’59 Ford F100 refurbished by a mechanic in his hometown of New Orleans. “Gangster, in this day and age, is just about swagger and mentality. It’s about taking what is rightfully yours.

“If there is something I want, I’m strong and steady about going and getting it.”

Such a strong will explains how Mackie landed his role in a movie that stars a slew of big names, including Sean Penn, Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone and Josh Brolin.

“Mackie is on the path to stardom and everyone in Hollywood knows it,” says “Gangster Squad” director Ruben Fleischer, who initially wanted Mackie to be in his last movie “30 Minutes or Less.” “The challenge was to convince him to be part of an ensemble, but really who can turn down the opportunity to wear a fedora and shoot a tommy gun?”

Mackie’s character, Harris, is the only African-American cop on an elite LAPD squad fighting to keep the East Coast Mafia from taking over Los Angeles in the late 1940s.

“Yeah, I’m the only black man in this film,” says Mackie, who is also slated to play Falcon, the first African-American superhero, in “The Avengers 2.” “That’s the story of my life. If you look at 1949, it’s not like America was the most racially advanced place on the planet. There weren’t a lot of black cops. So if you were a black cop, you had to be the best of the best.”

In a movie full of tommy guns and snub nose .38s, Harris’ weapon of choice is switchblade, which Mackie views as a sign of strength.

He says. “When I take you out, I want you to know that I’m there with you. I don’t want to shoot you for from far away.”

Fleischer compares Mackie’s role to James Coburn’s character in “The Magnificent Seven.”

“He is just a badass with a knife,” says the director. “It’s a classic Western movie trope. Mackie is the cool guy with the sweet knife skills.”

Fittingly for the actor whose main weapon is a knife, filming the gunfight scenes turned out to be a tricky proposition for Mackie.

“Filming these shooting scenes was crazy,” says Mackie. “They are shooting the car around me and at my feet and it looks like bullets, but actually it is just paintballs filled with dust. But those paintballs hurt and I kept getting hit.

“I'm like, most of the movie is at night, how do you see the black guy?”

Above all else, Mackie is honest, a refreshing trait in an age of actors who are trained to speak a lot but say a little. He does not hold back about his co-stars.

“If you had to make a list of who is the most gangster out of all the actors, I would say that Robert (Patrick) was probably the most gangsta, with me being a close second,” he says. “Not Josh (Brolin), he’s too cool to be a gangster. Least gangster was a tossup between Ryan (Gosling) and Giovanni Ribisi, which is a testament to their acting abilities.”

Fleischer describes Mackie best: “Other than Sean Penn, who is the most gangster dude you ever could hope to meet, Mackie is the most gangster on the squad. He just doesn’t give a crap. He’s not afraid. He’s a tough, bad dude.”

josterhout@nydailynews.com