A Tale of Revenge...

Rating: Null/10 (25 December 2002)

intertwined between a hodgepodge of story lines. There are just way too many story lines to follow. You have all the politics, all the varies gangs, and racism even thrown in. This movie, which centers around revenge, fails when compared to a great revenge story like Gladiator. If the story had just stuck with LD trying to get DDL back for killing his father, it would have been much better and shorter. I just could not get into the plot as much as I could with other epic movies.
DDL is really good as Bill the Butcher and deserves to be nominated for acting awards. But, I didn't think to much of LD and CD's attempts at Irish accents. Sometimes it sounded like they had them and other times the accent was lost.
As for the opening battle scene between the 2 gangs, it wasn't that great. I have heard it compared to scenes from Braveheart and Gladiator, but it was no where near as good. You couldn't see much of what was going on because of the short camera shots that skipped around, and there was no where near as much as blood and gore as there was in Braveheart or Gladiator.

(SPOILERS): As for the final, there isn't much of a pay off. We want to see LD really kick the crap out of DDL and knife him up like DDL had done to so many people throughout the movie. But, instead, DDL is wounded by a bomb, and all LD has to do is use his knife. There isn't much of a fight between them. The ending should have been more climatic. And as for the bombing, I didn't really understand why the ships were shooting bombs at the place where the gangs were going to fight because that was not where the mob was. Just another complaint that makes the story hard to follow and not too good.(END OF SPOILERS)
FINAL VERDICT: I wouldn't say this is bad, just average. I would just skip it at the theater because it is so long. But, DDL makes it worth watching if you can catch it on cable some time. Just don't expect a great story.