Gangs of New York

Rating:
Summary: D.D. Lewis, yes! Everyone else, no.
Review: Daniel Day Lewis is the best thing going for this oddball film. Beyond his performance I didn't find much to like about the story or even the overblown "historic" look of the film. The scenes involving troops during the riots look stilted and unauthentic; a far cry from other films that portray the Civil War period. Scorsese is a complete failure at combat scenes. The love story between DiCaprio's and Diaz's characters are woefully predictable and downright silly. Leaving her on the cutting room floor would have greatly improved the film. Let's face it; Scorsese is way past his prime. Time to retire, Marty.

Rating:
Summary: Realistic and Brutal storytelling
Review: I did not see this movie at the theater, so may have lost some of it's impact on the small screen, but overall found it very enjoyable, if at times, very violent.
Any movie over over two and a half hours long, that keeps your attention this well (and makes you feel like it was 90 minutes long) can't be all bad, but I don't rate it that highly. The rear of the box says "Over 135 critics agree - film of the year" and this I have to disagree with.
Performances are strong - Lewis, who is particularly villianous, is ably supported by DeCaprio as well as a host of good cameo's and the storyline is very good. My main criticism would be weakness of DeCaprio in building his character, and the almost superfluous role of Ms Diaz as the love interest. The beginning of the movie has Liam Neeson and Lewis in a rival gang face off in old New York, arguing over the immigrant Irish Catholicism versus the American locals in extremely violent and graphically depicted fashion, which sets up the story in an excellent way. We are then transported 16 years forward to see Neeson's son (DeCaprio) emerging from a correctional home for boys, and setting about avenging his father, and rebuilding his Irish claims to residency. Unfortunately as we proceed through the movie, you can't help feeling that Neeson would have been the better man for the role, as DeCaprio just doesn't come across as believable in my mind, and looks too polished. Great direction by Scorsese, and even if it is allegorical in character, it really does give you an idea of the struggle and brutality of the early history of the great city. This is not a bad movie by any means, but it isn't a "Great" movie either. It's just become like so many that are over hyped for so long, or have been overladen with Oscars and awards - you the viewer come to expect much much more than you get. If you'd never heard of this movie and rented it out by chance, you'd probably give it 5 stars, as it is - it only gets 3 in my book.

Rating:
Summary: Justice or Just Us. still an open question.
Review: The first half is a bloody, graphic, a-little-overdone, justification of violence in the service of vengence.
How much of the blood stained ground is a legitimate historical vision based on the character played by Daniel Day-Lewis, the butcher.
Versus how much is graphic gore to sell the movie, involve us emotionally, and to justify the reciprociated violence, i don't know.
What is obvious is that mid 19thC lower NewYork was not a pleasant walk in the park, it's people held life in low regard as a reflection of the greater society's condemnation of them to a living hell dominated by the very worse of human beings and human characteristics.
But, even though violence dominates the movie, it is not what it is about.

The movie is more like a well crafted novel with good historical anchoring, excellent character development and a richer multi-faceted plot than the usual Hollywood shoot-cut-them-up and watch them bleed movie. It justifiably earned and deserved the acclaim and awards it is gathering. But for me, movies like books are fundamentally vehicles to give my thoughts a boost, to put my energies into understanding something on the edge of my personal experience.
And this movie does this, for i started looking for information on old NewYork on the net, and looking for books after the movie had finished. I'd like to learn more, stimulated by the ideas in this movie. This is a very good thing.

But what is the movie about? What motivates the people, how are they like us, how are they different, what can we learn from their lives?
These are the constellation of questions that rattle around in my head after watching the movie and the shovelware in the second DVD.
For the simple answer it is the difference between "JUST US" and "JUSTICE" and the people behind each.

There is a central scene, where DiCaprio kneels at a rough Roman Catholic altar, Day-Lewis for his part kneels on a bench covered with an American flag, while a very upper crust society family prays over a elaborate loaded dinner table. Part of the scene is a view of the irony of prayer to a Diety where each participant immediately arises with blood on his mind and calmly, fervently tries to kill the others. But i would rather look at the volcano that each person represents and how the emotions which cry for justice are channelled by institutions reflecting particular ideologies as these people explode into the historical world where it becomes visible to us living 150 years later.

The force and power of the volcano is the human cry for justice, tainted by the demand for vengence, for blood for blood spilt.
It is evident in us as we view the movie, take up sides, cheer as we would for our hometown sports team, we feel these emotions inside us as they play out on the screen. But as they play out on the mean bloody streets of NewYork these emotions are manipulated, channelled, controlled, directed towards and away from by institutions, by ideologies, by people with a plan. Our history is a result of the playing out of various power groups, different ideas, cultures as they mixed and swirl inside people and explode into the streets on occasions like this but more often quietly work out their magic in the motivation of hands as they try to build a place to live, work and worship. That is the genius of this film, it characterizes the power centers of this time and place well enough that we can identify and understand a little of what must have gone on in those long past days. Yet influencing our times as evident in the final scene where the skyline of NewYork grows in the background as the foreground of the graves changes little, symbolizes the watchful dead eyes of the past over our present.

Go see it for yourself, worth the time which passes quickly, leaving you with questions about our institutions and our ancestors.

Rating:
Summary: good, but not great. Day-Lewis is incredible!
Review: Gangs of New York is the latest epic by famed director Martin Scorsese (Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, Casino). Gangs of New York stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis, Cameron Diaz, John C Reilly, and Jim Broadbent. Liam Neeson has a supporting role early in the film. Gangs of New York was nominated for 10 Academy Awards. This has been described as one of the best films of the year and that it should rank as one of the best of Scorsese's career. I'm not sure about that. I think that Gangs of New York was a good movie, but not a great one.

The film opens in New York City in 1846 with the stirrings of a gang war. Priest Vallon (Liam Neeson) is leading his Dead Rabbits gang against Bill "the Butcher" (Daniel Day-Lewis) Cutting and his gang of "Natives". We see the preparations for the battle that is to come as young Amsterdam Vallon follows his father around the headquarters. The scenes we see now will serve as flashbacks later as Amsterdam remembers the past. For now all this leads up to a major battle out in the streets between the two gangs and this ends with Bill the Butcher killing Priest Vallon in the streets as Amsterdam looks on. The Dead Rabbits are disbanded and outlawed, and Amsterdam is sent away to a religious boarding school to be educated.

Flash forward 17 years to 1863. The United States is in the midst of the Civil War. Irish immigrants are nearly flowing off the boats and are being pressed directly into military service for the Union. During the course of the movie we will see the infamous draft riots when the Federal Government institutes the first military draft in American history. To add to the reason for the draft, a man could be excused from the draft by paying $300 or offering a substitute. No poor man could do this and there was resentment, then anger, then riots. It is to this atmosphere that Amsterdam Vallon (Leonardo DiCaprio) returned to the Five Corners neighborhood of New York City.

Amsterdam has returned to New York and learns about the aftermath of his father's death. Bill the Butcher has pretty much taken control and while he is a feared gang leader he also appears to be a civic leader in the society. Amsterdam feeds a slow burning hate. He wants to get close to Bill to be able to kill him in front of the whole world (rather than in private). Bill takes Amsterdam under his wing as an apprentice and a fighter in his gang. Amsterdam also meets a pick pocket (and Bill's former mistress), a woman named Jenny Everdeane (Cameron Diaz). The focus of the film is the development of Amsterdam's character and his relationship with Bill. For the most part, Jenny is left as mostly as supporting role with little to do in regards to the story. There is minor focus on a relationship between Amsterdam and Jenny, but it is clear that this is not nearly as important as anything featuring Bill the Butcher. In fact, Bill the Butcher steals every scene that he is in. When Bill is in the movie you just can't take your eyes off of him.

I mentioned earlier that this is a good movie, but not a great one. I don't quite know why Gangs of New York fails to be an outstanding movie. Despite the fact that it is very interesting, fairly fast paced, has incredibly images and design, a fantastic director, excellent acting, has Daniel Day-Lewis; the parts are somewhat greater than the whole. That's the thing, the movie has everything it needs to be great but it falls short on some emotional level and is merely very good. I recommend this movie as one of the better films of 2002 and worth watching. Gangs of New York just may not take a place as one of the best films of all time...a potential that it did not quite live up to.

Rating:
Summary: Historical Opera
Review: I did not see this movie in theaters because I wasn't quite sure what type of movie it was supposed to be. And when I first watched the DVD, I kept napping (okay, I had just worked 3 12-hour shifts back to back). It took a rewatch to figure out what Scorcese was after. The key is Opera. This movie is classically operatic in scope, theme, production value, and rich over-the-top plumminess.
There are 4 stand-outs: Bill the Butcher, the Five Points, the music, and the haunting final scene. The supporting characters of Priest, Monk, Tweed,and Mulraney are also very well-portrayed. The younger actors, bankable stars DiCaprio and Diaz, are, by comparison, noticeable as actors rather than disappearing into their characters. Their accents come and go, and they don't yet have the experience to carry off a period piece without looking and sounding anachronistic. Henry Thomas manages his craft best of the young actors.
But back to the stars. Daniel Day-Lewis simply never does anything wrong. The sets and costumes are gorgeously dramatic, and yes, colors were crazy at that time. Aniline dyes had just been discovered, and everyone was wearing heinously gaudy combinations. And the music; the combination of period barsongs, Scottish and Irish folktunes, U2 and Peter Gabriel - wonderful! The use of music as it would occur naturally (the singers in the bar, the different dancing scenes, the Chinese opera, the pep band before the battle) - fantastic! I had to buy the soundtrack immediately.

Rating:
Summary: Terrific! Action Packed!
Review: If you put titanic in a pot with rambo and baked for 2 hours and 40 minutes, you would get Gangs of New York.This is movie is Exellent. It has a great story in the crooked, and dangerous streets of New York City in 1862(I think) The Villan(Lewis) does an exellent job. This movie has a wonderfull plot, filled with action packed adventure with an amazing ending in which..., well, you'll just have to see it for yourself. If I could, I would give it 10,000,000 Thumbs up. Leo D's Best movie yet. Hands down the best picture of the year, maybe best EVER. Buy This! NOWWWWW!!!

Rating:
Summary: Big, ugly, contrived.
Review: Gangs of New York. This has been Martin Scorsese's baby for thirty years. And it's a train wreck. But perhaps it's with little surprise. The dark clouds of trouble hung over the production of this film from day one: there were rumours of script pages being re-written in between takes, budget problems, fighting between Scorsese and Miramax, rumours of editing that did not meet Scorsese's approval. And the release date slipped further and further away. All of this added up to a film that was both sloppy and nearly incoherent. It is a giant, ugly, overwrought contrivance. Indeed, when the film opened with a huge street fight that was edited to look like an MTV video, with modern rock drum loops, I knew this film was in trouble. Submerged in New York's notorious Five Points district in 1846, this is a tale of vengeance: after witnessing the death of his father (Liam Neeson) by William "Bill The Butcher" Cutting, Amsterdam (DiCaprio) swore that one day, he would kill Bill The Butcher. But the path of vengeance does not run smooth for Amsterdam as he becomes entangled with Cameron Diaz.

This should have been a truly great film, but the sloppy script cannot scale the Shakespearean heights to which it clearly aspires. Such a shame. Indeed, Amsterdam's desire for vengeance is ultimately ridiculous: His father was killed in open combat, not murdered. But there are other problems: Scorsese's traditionally roving camera, so powerful in Good Fellas, becomes annoying; characterisations are nearly swallowed up by the huge set pieces; Cameron Diaz is lost; Leonardo DiCaprio broods alot. Fortunately, shining through the mess, is Daniel Day-Lewis. Bill The Butcher enters the pantheon of cinema's great characters. Violent, honerable, philosopher, racist, and willing to die to defend his country against massive immigrant hordes, this "Nativist" is the soul of the film. Indeed, as he demonstrated in Raging Bull, in Scorsese's world, a willingness to fight is the highest virtue. Amen. Gangs of New York ultimately climaxes with the draft riots, one of the more violent moments in American history. Conscription into the Civil War was enacted by congress in March 1863. The result was an outburst of anger and destruction by White immigrants who resented the fact that they were fighting to free a people who would only threaten their jobs by driving down wages. But Scorsese's treatment of the draft riots is not satisfying. The mass slaughter of Blacks by the immigrants is merely glossed over. In fact, the relationship between the gang wars and the riots is never intelligibly established. So in the end, as it stands, Gangs of New York will not age well. Its faults are too fundamental.

Rating:
Summary: Thoroughly disappointed
Review: The story and setting had enormous potential but the casting left a lot to be desired. DeCaprio looks too much like a boy to play the role of a tough guy raised in a 19th century reformatory; poor dental hygiene aside, Oliver Twist maybe, Amsterdam Vallon never. Not enough Liam Neeson in the movie and Daniel Day-Lewis' performance as Bill Cutting was a little over the top. His character seemed better suited to the role of villain in a Batman movie.

Rating:
Summary: Gangs of New York: Spectacular but Unconvincing
Review: GANGS OF NEW YORK has been hailed as a magnificent recreation of a pre-Civil War New York torn by racial and ethnic prejudice. Others label it in the same words but without the qualifier 'magnificent.' The truth is probably somewhere in between. Director Martin Scorsese clearly wanted GANGS OF NEW YORK to fit in with his frequent mythological interpretations of purely American character and history. Scorsese succeeds in capturing the overblown essence that was surely the chaotic mess of the Boss Tweed era. However dangerous New York might seem today, the proliferation of gangs and crooked cops make the waterfront section of the Five Points seem as hostile as Beirut ever was. In nearly every scene, Scorcese places muggers, burning buildings, hookers, pickpockets, and urban warfare.

The unifying theme that Scorcese sought was that of revenge, most often for the murder of a family member. There are no less than three separate examples of revenge sought as a reason to wreak further havoc. The primary seeker is, of course, Amsterdam Vallon, hugely miscast by Leonardo DiCaprio. In nearly every scene that DiCaprio is in, he shows no more emotion than the ubiquitous picture of his late father shows. The only exception is the fistfight between him and one of Bill the Butcher's lackeys. For a child who saw his father killed in street warfare, DiCaprio as an adult is remarkably unconcerned. He is meant to be the dramatic center, but he is so lacking in the gravitas required of an action hero, that the audience by default looks elsewhere. This dramatic vacuum is soon filled by Daniel-Day Lewis, who plays Bill 'the Butcher' Cutter, in one of the most memorable screen villain performances ever. Lewis steals the show in much the same way that James Earl Jones did as Darth Vader in STAR WARS. Lewis struts, rhapsodizes, bullies, and tosses knives as he embodies the very essence of a thug who knows how to build and to maintain a criminal empire. He even engages the audience's sympathy as he shows himself to be a 'butcher' more in the job sense than in the psychological one. He kills people, true enough, but he does so with his own hands. His cohort-in-crime, Boss Tweed kills far more in allowing New York to be a cesspool that gobbles up thousands of disembarking Irish on a daily basis. Further, Bill as the Butcher, kills Amsterdam Vallon's father in fair and open combat and even praises his fallen foe as a worthy opponent whose corpse ought not be defiled. Cameron Diaz as Jenny the pickpocket has little to do but first attract Amsterdam's attentions then heal his physical wounds.

The lasting impression of GANGS OF NEW YORK is how Scorcese depicts the anarchy that was New York during the anti-draft riots of the Civil War. The swirling gangs with colorful names like the Plug-Uglies, the Dead Rabbits, and the Bowery Boys are seen ultimately as the collective consciousness of a city that was being inundated by immigrants who themselves were immigrants only one generation past but now call themselves 'nativists.' Given the length of the film (167 minutes) it would have been difficult for any director to keep the audience focused on the titular hero. But in this case, Scorsese unwittingly proved once again that a charismatic villain can easily overshadow a bland hero to such an extent that the audience identifies more with this villain than either with the hero or the plot. Still, the resounding spectacle makes GANGS OF NEW YORK required viewing.

Rating:
Summary: Scorsese's near miss masterpiece?
Review: "Gangs of New York" is director Martin Scorsese's monumental epic about that great city and its immigrant population at the time of the Civil War. While it may not quite succeed as Scorsese's masterpiece [ a goal I think was intended], it is nonetheless a well-crafted and compelling movie. Perhaps the failing lies as much with modern American audiences, who, as a whole, are shockingly indifferent to and uniformed about the history of this nation. Dramatic license aside, the film seemed rather accurate to me.

The story revolves around a section of the city called Five Points. Two gangs - one composed of recent immigrants and another made of men who were born in America - fought for control of the area. In an opening scene, the 'natives' roust the immigrants in a decisive battle. Amsterdam Vallon [Leonardo DiCaprio], a young boy, vows revenge against the natives after his father, leader of the immigrants, is killed in the fight. Fifteen years later, Amsterdam returns to Five Points to find that the leader of the natives, William Cutting [Daniel Day Lewis], now rules Five Points. Amsterdam wisely ingratiates himself with Cutting, who has no idea of the young man's real identity. Cutting takes a genuine liking the Amsterdam, unaware that Amsterdam's real intention is to kill him. All of this is played out against the riots that plagued New York when the Federal government first instituted the draft to provide soldiers for the Civil War.

The cast is excellent, the photography is first rate, and the music mesmerizing. The movie seems too long at almost three hours, but I don't know what could have been cut out without making the story weak and confusing. And something makes me suspect that future audiences, perhaps more aware of the French and Japanese cinema influences which are rampart in the movies, will be kinder to it than today's moviegoers. For, despite its seeming flaws, "Gangs of New York" is a remarkable achievement.