Gangs of New York
On general release. Directed by Martin Scorcese. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio: Amsterdam Vallon; Daniel Day-Lewis: Bill the Butcher; Cameron Diaz: Jenny Everdeane; Liam Neeson: Priest Vallon; Jim Broadbent: "Boss" Tweed; Brendan Gleeson: Monk. Written by Jay Cocks, Steven Zaillian, and Kenneth Lonergan.
In the Unbearable Lightness of Being Milan Kundera considers an obscure inter-tribal conflict in Africa during the 14th century: while full of personal tradegy, it had no effect on history. Gangs of New York opens with an all-stops-out tribal battle in the New York snow between two conferences of gangs. Their meeting is fine cinema, redolent of the gang entry in Coppola's Rumblefish, and just as hard to pull off in real life. The gathering for the fight is a portent of the whole film: realism, even reference to a real world is sacrificed for beauty and light. The battle turns into a personal tragedy for Amsterdam Vallon when his father 'Priest' Vallon is killed by William 'Bill the Butcher' Cutting (Daniel Day-Lewis).
Two things happen. First, there is one of the more remarkable tableaux in the film as the camera slowly rises out of the Five Points as if it were placed on some atavistic spy satellite; second, the action skips foward 16 years and loses its momentum. 'Gangs of New York' is a better visual spectacle than it is a narrative. Scorcese has his usual merits: his eye for filmic beauty, a way with actors, a deep feeling for his city, and a refined neurosis hung up on violence. The plot, while having an almost Shakespearian skeleton as the adult Amsterdam Vallon (Leonardo DiCaprio) ticks off the Machievellian 'how to be an aspirant prince' pointers, doesn't carry Scorcese's obsessions, and the subplot, the romance between Jenny Everdeane (Cameron Diaz) and Vallon is so shallow that it's better told by a couple of jealous-hopeless glowers by Vallon's friend Johnny (Henry Thomas) than by the tedious clinches of Diaz and DiCaprio.
The houses look as if they were abandoned during construction and there's an awful jerry-built feel to the Five Points area. The sets are great, but most of the actors are only scarred under their clothes: even when Vallon is wounded in the face and intentionally maimed, he heals up pretty well. The dirt doesn't cling to DiCaprio enough.
If I scored with stars, I couldn't give 'Gangs' more than three out of five. It's too long with too little excellence in that time. The crowd scenes show some of the great Scorcese, but at the edges the extras are too often clearly playing. The final shot of the nineteenth century New York morphing into the twenty-first is a wonder. The knife-throwing scene is one of the highest tension episodes, as well as Day-Lewis's apogee. But the climax is the final gang fight between Day-Lewis and DiCaprio which happens at the same time as the riots against the draught. This doesn't work for so many reasons. I understood from the scene with the fire where two amateur fire engines showed up, one bearing Day-Lewis, that the fire fighters were aligned with the gangs, but instead of going to the battle, they tear down the merchant houses in upper Manhattan. In an effort to divide the gangs into 'right' and 'wrong' Day-Lewis's 'Nativists' are portrayed as racists, and the Irish gangs have black members. These don't join the gang fight either, they all walk the streets individually elsewhere until a gang descends on them and lynches them. It doesn't make sense.
'Gangs' does have moments of visionary cinematography, and an excellent on form cast. (The word that Day-Lewis steals the film from DiCaprio seems misguided; it's about Bill the Butcher, he's the main attraction, it's his film to lose. It's Jim Broadbent who takes more than his part.) It suffers from a lack of a decent soundtrack. Only the drum beats at the end convey any emotion. The U2 song which accompanies the credits is the greatest stinker since that Bryan Adams number for Robi Hood; it also seems to be about a different film. The wisdom of the film is that these people's lives ended in failure. They didn't build America. They fights were pointless, and have been forgotten (so much so that the history is largely made up). Scorcese has never been better on the futility of violence.
