A Few Thoughts On Martin Scorsese’s 2002 Film Gangs Of New York.

I was unimpressed with it when it came out about just under 20 years ago. And I just happened to watch it again, in part to see what, if anything, I’d missed.

Here are my truncated impressions 

Scorsese’s film was about 24 years in the making and as spectacle it’s impressive. But, with all the scenes of brawling violence, and with all the impressive pageantry, the underlying story is thin even as the movie’s aim is for something larger than life, epical, mythic, as if suffused with some kind of archetypal, primitive evil truth. Instead we get something static and verging on the absurd. What’s meant to be vividly larger than life turns grey in its diffuseness. 

The aim goes awry, and the film sinks, then drowns in its ocean of spectacle. The thin story is met with portentous, bombast, especially from Day-Lewis. He does admittedly make for an eyes-bright, compelling, charismatic villain who alone transcends the weight of the spectacle. But there’s no one else to match him. DiCaprio should have, but is miscast as he fails, flails in his attempt at portraying youthful, righteous, even attractive, rage and ferocity, slyly biding his time for vengeance. He’s not convincing in his role and in acting and as a character is feasted upon by Day-Lewis. Cameron Diaz is even less effective and her growing relationship with DiCaprio is as lifeless as a dead rabbit. At least Jim Broadbent as the politically manipulative Boss Tweed is lively and convincing in his role. 

The final scene of Bill and Amsterdam finding each other amidst all the smoke filled murderous chaos is incredibly contrived as is Amsterdam and Jenny finding each other at the end and standing together, athwart all the chaotic, death filled, stinking  destruction. Them together surviving together in their love, their future open to them, form an homage to one of the hoariest romantic cliches.  

The films shows Scorsese at both his biggest and soggiest. The film isn’t boring but the ongoing spectacle makes it choppy, inorganic and static as though we’re watching a series of set pieces. The martial scenes at first impression are stunning but then in their continuing hacking, slashing, stabbing and blood letting  benumb us in the thick of all the endless chaos. They becomes dramatically pointless. And isn’t it contrived that the opening chaotic battle naturally comes down to a head to head to battle between Priest and Bill the Butcher? 

That’s, like so much else in this movie, device not drama. 

6/10