From all its outward appearances, "Gangster Squad" is a movie about gangsters.

In seeing the photos and footage, the film finds Ryan Gosling, Josh Brolin and Sean Penn making the most of the period setting and mob-movie staples like fedoras, pinstriped suits and Tommy guns. But when MTV News caught up with Gosling at the L.A. premiere of the film, we asked him what we should know about being gangsters from his perspective, but as it turned out, he wasn't focused on the gangster element as much.

"Well I guess I don't really know. We were playing cops, ultimately," he said about not knowing how to act like a gangster. "And cops who had to sort of behave in way that they wouldn't necessarily choose to but they had no choice, but it was incredible -- this is very different from the real story, in some ways the real story is even more surreal and unbelievable because these men actually did this."

The Ruben Fleischer-directed crime drama is "inspired" by the true story of a real-life gangster squad comprised of a group of cops who worked in secret to eradicate organized crime from Los Angeles. The film also marks the second romantic pairing of Gosling and Emma Stone, and given the amount of fun the two actors have together, we asked Gosling what kind of movie we can expect to see them together in next.

"Whatever it takes to get my money back, because she owes me money and I won't forget about it," Gosling revealed, adding that he'll happily take on whatever role required to be reunited with Stone in order to settle this mystery debt.

Check out everything we've got on "Gangster Squad."