Good, But Missed the Mark

Rating: 9/10 (28 March 2015)

This is a tough film to review. GoNY was a major "film event" on its release, yet it wasn't quite what people were expecting. While I do like it, I found it took me about 3-4 viewings to fully get it, and since then, the film has lingered a bit as a mixed bag. The conclusion I came to is that this is a good film, but also a victim of story problems and overhype.
The backstory is that Scorsese came upon a history book on NYC and fell in love with this period. Wanting to make a film set in this time, he commissioned a script to be written that covered all the main points he wanted (the draft riots, illegal boxing, NYC's competing fire departments). And because of this, what we get is a film more interested in its setting, historical context, and political subtext than it is in its A-story.
On the positive-side, no one can deny the film's production value: larger-than-life sets, sweeping cinematography, meticulous attention to detail. The film has a great sense of scope. Most of all, the film is very rich in subtext. Scorsese tells us the story of the US being born and deconstructs the idealistic image of "the Land of the Free." Immigrants are exploited off the boat and enlisted in a war they know nothing about, politics are corrupt, northerners are either racist or indifferent to the Civil War and flat-out hate Lincoln. Parallels are immediately drawn with the state of the US today, with immigration, rigged elections, and "Native Americans fearing foreign influence" (a phrase that takes on an ironic meaning given today's definition of the term). The film ends with a shot of modern NYC with the World Trade Center standing proudly, having a very haunting effect and making us think of modern violence. The movie had the perfect tagline: "America was born in the streets" and this motif is depicted perfectly.
But while this internal story is great, the external one it's placed upon just...isn't all that great. The main plot is filled with tropes and clichés about a man named Amsterdam seeking revenge on a gang-leader. Amsterdam is not a very interesting lead character, and it's one of DiCaprio's less compelling roles. His romance with Jenny (Cameron Diaz) is not particularly strong either, and there are many hackneyed narrative devices (surrogate father, lovers triangle, blood vendettas). The narrative itself isn't quite cohesive: there's a whole subplot about Brendan Gleeson's character running for office in a rigged election and then getting killed. Why is this there? It appears towards the start of the third act, takes up 20 minutes of screen time, and hurts the pacing. John C. Reilly is also in the film in a role that feels like it was once much bigger.
The one thing everyone loved about the film was Daniel Day-Lewis; a whole new generation of filmgoers first discovered him in this role, given his long absence from the screen at the time. The thing is that, it's now difficult to not compare the role to his later role in THERE WILL BE BLOOD. The two characters look and sound similar, and Daniel Plainview blows Bill the Butcher out of the water. Watching it today, Bill almost feels like a dress-rehearsal for the superior performance as Plainview.
Finally, GoNY was also hurt by its marketing. I remember seeing the very first trailer in the summer of 2001, as it was originally intended to be released that Christmas season. It ended up being delayed a year due to issues in post production (and I suspect also partially due to 9/11). So when it was finally released in Christmas of 2002, it had been a year and a half of seeing trailers and hearing so much about film. The marketing campaign was extremely aggressive, promising a great historical epic, campaigned hard for Oscars that the film seemed tailor-made to sweep, and especially made a point of emphasizing "C'mon and give Scorsese that long-overdue Best Director Oscar." In the end, it failed to win a single award, which seemed to be a clear sign of rejection by audiences (COLD MOUNTAIN had a similarly-obnoxious marketing campaign the following year which also backfired).
I still remember seeing the film opening weekend with a packed house. The moment it began to end and the music swelled, half the audience started getting up and leaving. Outside in the lobby everyone was talking about their odd reaction. It wasn't necessarily outright negative, but just an overall feeling of "Is that it? Why did it need to be so long to just be that? After all the hype, there's a lot less to the movie than it seemed." I suspect Scorsese intended the film to be something quite different, but along the way Harvey Weinstein turned it into an epic, intended Oscar juggernaut, which it was not.
Speaking of THERE WILL BE BLOOD, that may be a good template for what Scorsese was going for. That film is also large in scope with a director's passion for a historical setting and attention to detail that clearly shows, but the narrative is much less Hollywood, more intimate, unconventional yet engrossing. It's an approach that would have served GoNY well. As it stands, GoNY has its fans, but has never quite reached the heights of a classic, or influenced the public consciousness. A good film, but a missed opportunity.