Timothy Woodward Jr. was born too late. Clearly the kind of enterprise that enabled this actor-turned-director to make no less than 13 features in the last five years for his own production company would’ve been ideally deployed in a “golden age” Poverty Row studio. And had they too existed back then, such reduced former A-listers as Tom Sizemore, Dolph Lundgren, Kris Kristofferson and Denise Richards probably still would have sooner or later found themselves toiling in Woodward Jr.’s joints, all lowbudget actioners of one sort or another. His latest is ambitious in the sense of being a period piece, something it pulls off with reasonable, resourceful aplomb even if the script (among other things) is too generic to result in anything more memorable than a passable time-filler. Gangster Landis not exactly good. But at least it’s farther along on the road to good than such prior Status Media efforts as Gnome Aloneand the mysteriously all-caps WEAPONIZED. Given the gradually upticking arc of his opuses’ IMDb ratings to date, Woodward should finally score a 6 out of 10 sometime next year. He’s got the perspiration part down; surely inspiration can’t hold out much longer.

Jack (Sean Faris) is a nice Italian boy in 1922 Chicago, the son of immigrant shopkeepers. Trying to make it as a pugilist, his professional ring debut attracts attention from no less than Al Capone (Milo Gibson), at this stage just a subordinate working for Johnny Torrio (Al Sapienza).