`Gangs of New York:' A smashing, bashing success
By C. SPENCER BEGGS
Scene Movie Critic
It's said that good things come to those who wait. Well, moviegoers have been waiting 25 years for acclaimed director Martin Scorsese to finally get "Gangs of New York" through production. And it was certainly worth the wait.
The movie is a revisionist look at American history. Opening in 1846 in an underground labyrinth of the tenement slums of New York, an immigrant Irishman called Priest Vallon (Liam Neeson) gathers warriors to form the Dead Rabbits, a fearsome gang of ruthless Irish brawlers. Bursting into the daylight they meet their opponents, the Nativists, led by William "Bill the Butcher" Cutting (Daniel Day-Lewis).
The rivals settle with blood and iron which gang will control the ghetto they live in on the Lower East Side of Manhattan known as the Five Points. The melee turns against the Irishmen and the Butcher cuts down Vallon in front of his own son.
It will be 16 years before Vallon's son returns to the Five Points from hiding in a Protestant seminary. The young man (Leonardo DiCaprio) takes the name Amsterdam and returns to Five Points, which has fallen under the tyrannical iron fist and suspicious glass eye of the Butcher. The wily Amsterdam infiltrates the Butcher's organization and broods on his revenge even as his boss takes the boy under his wing. But draft riots, pressure from Boss Tweed's (Jim Broadbent) Tammany Hall and a developing romantic interest with a beguiling thief named Jenny (Cameron Diaz) complicate Amsterdam's certainly self-destructing scheme to murder the Butcher.
"Gangs of New York" is a dark movie and Scorsese seems to revel in it. Day-Lewis turns in a spectacular performance, delicately balancing the Butcher's animalistic bloodlust with a darkly cynical yet poignant philosophy and a deeply poetic sense of justice.
At times the movie can seem a bit preachy, like in a scene where the Butcher slings a hatchet into the back of a newly elected Irish official and then screams manically into the camera, "Here's the minority vote."
But this is exactly the effect Scorsese wanted. He points out that the history of America was founded partially on the ethereal ideals imbued with words such as freedom, liberty and equality but constructed corporeally with greed, crime and violence.
"Gangs" is historical fiction and Scorsese took great pains to paint the period broadly even down to the nitty gritty details like having an expert on vintage fighting techniques help choreograph the action sequences and rebuilding a number of New York neighborhoods.
With $100 million spent on details like these, Scorsese manages to make the film more of a hyper-realistic Kafkaesque impression of the period rather than a traditional historical portrayal. While venturing too far into the fictional realm of historical fiction is one of the best ways to ruin a perfectly good movie, Scorsese shows why he is often considered America's most talented living director by rewriting the rules of cinema.
All Scene Stories for Thursday, January 16, 2003
