Violent and pointless trawl through the gaslight NY gutter of yesteryear.

Rating: 6/10 (23 August 2004)

In 1846 a boy sees his father killed in a gang battle on the Five Point slums of New York and grows up intent on patient and cold blooded revenge.
Only Martin Scorsese could get this pointless and expensive pot-boiler made and only the presence of a top class actor like Daniel Day-Lewis stops it from falling apart at the seams. God bless him for taking the role, he couldn't be bad in anything even if he tried.
While fortunes have been spent on the setting (very convincing too) what goes on in the foreground is backside achingly dull. MS seems to know it too and the only thing he can think of is to throw in lots of violence, sex and pop music (yes you read me right!) hoping to spice up the tasteless and banal life-on-the-street soup.
This is a Dickensian world of thieves, gangs, corruption and intrigue, but despite having three writers it has no soul and no depth. Charles Dickens took us to the underworld but we got a sense of time, place and purpose among the downbeats and the downtrodden. Here we have only cartoons (corrupt cop, corrupt politician, big bad boss, etc.). We are stuck on no-hope street - you are born stupid, live stupid and die stupid. Usually in some violent and over-the-top way.
Leonardo DiCaprio is a problem because he is not much of an actor. Good looking and high cheek-boned he has not had his "Born of the Fourth of July" - where Tom Cruise won an Oscar nomination and proved he could, if pushed, act a bit. His character is stupid and uneducated, but smearing dirt on your face and voicing words in cod Irish (that is what it sounds like anyway) is not really acting and doesn't carry the weight of the picture at all.
Daniel Day-Lewis is supposed to be the arch villain but we are with him all the way because he is the only one doing anyway remotely interesting or having anything remotely interesting to say! Cameron Diaz dyes her hair red and plays an Irish pickpocket, but seems a bolt-on to establish the leads heterosexuality.
The film had production difficulties and you can see why. You can almost hear them in the screening room whispering "this isn't working - this isn't working" as you watch the film. The book may have have seemed fascinating and historical in print (to Martie anyway), but has little impact on the screen. Losers, lose - but before they lose they fight, screw and shout at each other a lot.
I was glad when the last throat had been slashed and the last drop of blood had run down the snowy NY gutter, because it fell short of cheap TV on the entertainment front and had precious little to offer as a history lesson.