With Gangster Squad and Lawless fast approaching, cinemas will soon be echoing to the rattle of Tommy gun rounds. Put simply, gangsters are back in a big way. Close your eyes come the end of the year and it could be the 1930s all over again, with Tom Hardy and Ryan Gosling standing in for Cagney and Robinson.

Obviously you'll need to open them again to take in these two news stills from Gangster Squad - unless you're Daredevil or something - but it'll be worth the effort for the glimpse they offer of Los Angeles crime boss Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) and the man who's trying to bring him down, John O'Mara (Josh Brolin).

They appear in Empire's August issue which boasts a crime special with enough bootlegging, Thompson submachine-gunning and improbably-sized cigars to give Eliot Ness a conniption. In fact, Eliot Ness is in there, with a look back at The Untouchables. Pride of place in this gangland special - "a whole lotta talk and some pictures" as Capone might put it - is a behind-the-scenes investigation of a movie that's piqued our interest in a big way.

Ruben Fleischer's crime thriller is set in '40s LA rather than Prohibition-era Chicago, but, explains the director, the principles are the same. "It's a classic story of good guys versus bad guys," says Fleischer. "There's a lot of shooting and a lot of action."

Sounds good to us. Gangster Squad is out on November 9, while Empire's own gangster issue is out in all good newsagents from June 28 with plenty more cracking Squad pictures.