Gangs of New York
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Director: Martin Scorsese
Starring: Liam Neeson, Henry Thomas, John C. Reilly, Jim Broadbent, Leonardo Di Caprio, Cameron Diaz, Brendan Gleeson, Daniel Day-Lewis
Synopsis: Based on the novel by Herbert Asbury and Luc Sante, Gangs of New York is set (oddly enough) in New York City, 1840-1863. A young man named Amsterdam (Leonardo DiCaprio) seeks vengeance against Bill 'The Butcher' Poole (Daniel Day-Lewis), the man who killed his father. Though he secures the help of pickpocket Jenny Everdeane, the task at hand may be more dangerous than Amsterdam ever imagined when he realizes that his father was murdered as a result of gang warfare between the powerful Manhattan Irish and Italian gangs. Amid the crooked cops and corrupt politicians of the Tammany Hall era, political enforcer Bill Poole stands out as only one scoundrel in the crime-plagued Five Points section of lower Manhattan in the early 1860s.
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Amazon | Amazon.CA | DVD Empire |
| The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld (Novel) | | NA | NA | | Gangs of New York | | | | | Gangs of New York - Soundtrack | | NA | NA |
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Review: Scorsese is a talent to be reckoned with. At his best we get films like Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, The Last Temptation of Christ...and at the other end we get things like Bringing Out The Dead and Gangs of New York. Certainly better than most middleweight directors but Scorsese is no middleweight. He just gets a little bogged down sometimes....Gangs of New York is a film bogged down by heavy handed scripting and unsharpened scissors in the editing room.
The positives are many. One is Daniel Day Lewis who not only lives up to the hype of the Oscar Buzz he is receiving for his portrayal of Bill The Butcher, but makes one hope he doesn't disappear off the screen for another four years. The man commands attention for every scene he is in.
Another positive is the allure of the historical lesson you are being handed. A look at a New York one can only read about...a city in birth, in political strife, exploding with the backdrop of the civil war and influx of immigrants. This same positive also becomes part of the problem as the scope can become too wide and focus is lost.
A lot of hype is being driven Di Caprio's way and while he is never the glue of the movie that he needs to be, this is the scripts fault and not his. A lot of bad things have happened to Amsterdam as he grew up...watching his father's death, brought up as an orphan, the live of a thief...but really it seems as if EVERYONE has a horrible life that singling out one individual seems rather odd.
Besides...for the most part DiCaprio holds onto his Irish brogue while Diaz's accent comes and goes with even more frequency than Kevin Costner's in Robin Hood.
There is a really good movie here in Gangs of New York...but the running time of 169 minutes is insane. Trim 30...maybe forty minutes out and we might be left of less epic New York tale, but one of it's inhabitants, of the people we came to see, and a more focused tale. As it stands Gangs is tolerable...some scenes stand out as pure Scorsese and I will never forget the image of The Butcher tapping his knife against his glass eye...I just wish the film stayed the straight and narrow, but can not argue with it's attempt to tell such a large story. It is all admirable work, but I do wish the story could have been confined and worked a little better than it does.
Finally Tally: 1 Star for Daniel Day Lewis...another star for the look and feel of Old New York, and finally half a star because, well, hell, it's Scorsese and he warrants a lot more praise than I seem to be giving the man. For those who avoid math as much as I do...that's 2.5 stars out of 5.
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Copyright© Written By: Rob Paul
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