Gangs of New York | Review

Lewis gives the best villian performance since Darth Vader in Scorsese’s newest epic tale.

After the awfully bad taste in your mouth films of Kundun (1997) and Bringing Out The Dead (1999), the Il maestro of contemporary filmmaking returns with a wrath-like force with yet another film set in America’s favorite city. A long time in the making (since the 70’s!), Martin Scorsese’s newest and most expensive feature will become a must have DVD with the number of the deleted scenes that didn’t make it in the sprawling three hour epic. So he’s a little bit of a perfectionist and defiantly this film enthusiast put in a lot of blood, sweat and tears, not too mention the many overtime hours that caused an almost two year delay with the film being re-cut, re-shot, re-scheduled….basically re-everything into one of the best pictures of 2002.

Envisioned with the writings by Herbert Asbury’s early 20’s novel in mind, Scorsese brings to us the true nature of the New York underworld that makes Cambodia look like a top destination for your leisure vacation. The natives and the foreigners do anything it takes to survive-they chop there way around town or simply burn down a path to stay alive in the hellish place called the five points. Gangs of New York sees a priest fighting father (Liam Neeson-Schindler’s List) take on the bigger than life villain that goes by the name of Bill the Butcher (Daniel Day-Lewis-The Boxer) and guess who comes out the victor? Not much of a guessing game takes place in this tale in which the main plot sees a boy, now a grown up by the name of Amsterdam who seeks revenge but becomes a surrogate son before lashing out.

Scorsese brings to us a tremendously well edited film with glorious visuals, an Oscar worthy performance in Day-Lewis and an overall production that gets the highest marks of the year along with Jackson’s LOTR: The Two Towers. Production designer Dante Ferretti gives a great look for the époque; the indoor and exterior design shows off the true colors of the socially and economically pulverized city. Cinematographer Michael Ballhaus visually captures the shadowy detail in the interior shots and grabs a nice plan of the battle scene with some aerial shots from above. Besides re-creating a visual and atmospheric texture, Scorsese underlines the personas found in the novel-the gang names and the description of the living quarters and harbor front are essential to the film and so is the ravage bloodshed that also took place. Thankfully, the flawed pacing and the sometimes dreary slower narrative details are uplifted by the coming out of retirement excellent performance of a Daniel Day Lewis who gives us a owns the role and owns the character of a devilishly spirited fellow-who spits out his words of wisdom and battle cries in a jagged form. DiCaprio and co. can hardly match the size of his performance. Surprisingly I found myself liking the subplot romance with the character of Cameron Diaz (Vanilla Sky), which is somewhat unconventional affinity between thieves and their troubled childhoods. However, I would have cut Diaz out of the film completely and saved the film from its one too many long run time.

Overall, Gangs of New York lacks in dramatic highs to keep the viewer enthralled throughout, you’ll need to re-sharpen your thoughts and admiration for the visual master craft, however the authentic quality is captured chaos and all the red that accompanies the piece. I’ll cry foul to anyone who says that this is his most accomplished work, this is a great picture and his best since Goodfellas, had the red found in the blood red scenes will replaced by the red of the carpet and Oscar gold.

Rating 3.5 stars