Are You Kidding Me?!

Rating: 1/10 (25 June 2003)

Are you kidding me? This film was nominated for Oscars? Of all the junk over the years that has been nominated and has won Oscars this has got to be one of the worst yet! First of all is the actors; Leonardo DiCaprio has no business ever playing a tough guy kind of role. DiCaprio is so girlish that he is laughable as anyone who would be in a knife fight and should stick to roles where he plays either gay character or someone who is just very fem. DiCaprio seems right at home in a sappy love story such as Titanic or as a mentally handicapped person such as his role in What's Eating Gilbert Grape. As if Leon wasn't bad enough we have to deal with 166 minutes of Daniel Day-Lewis looking like a bum and acting like a confused mime. I can't think of a movie where an actor or actress has failed more miserably in a part as Daniel Day-Lewis did in this movie; he was in a word, Laughable. Now as if the two main characters failing so utterly was not enough there are several other things which make this movie near unbearable. Of this list the first thing that comes to mind is the silly costumes which although somewhat authentic for the period were over-done and seen far too much. An example of this was the ten-gallon hats. Yes, people wore them back then but in this movie almost everyone had one on which would be like someone 140 years from now making a movie which takes place in 2003 and the same percentage of people as were wearing ten-gallon hats in this movie were wearing baseball caps. The next most annoying thing about Gangs of New York was the music; the same perpetual square dancing music played over and over again as if they just couldn't come up with something better. Moving right along we come to another very annoying `feature' . the accents done by DiCaprio and Day-Lewis, neither of which sounded anything like they should; aren't actors by definition supposed to, well, ACT?! Let's face it here people, if Leonardo DiCaprio wasn't in this movie along with Scorsese directing it, but rather had an unknown set of lead actors and actresses with an unknown director orchestrating this whole farce, this movie not only would have never gotten a single Oscar nomination but probably would have went directly to cable or video. The only upside to this whole fiasco was perhaps the cinematography and the story. This movie had a lot going for it but was ultimately doomed by the bad acting, poor casting, hilarious costume design, annoying music and boat load of other things that sank this ship before it ever left the harbor . 3 out of 10 stars for this catastrophic calamity.