Bold, epic, magnificent movie

Rating: 7/10 (1 February 2003)

"Gangs of New York" is a big, bold and magnificent; it is glorious movie-making, period. The brilliance starts right away in this film, because it opens upon a seemingly alien world that the audience has never seen, but as it pours itself out into a small and poor inner 1846 New York City neighborhood we come to realize that what we are witnessing is not a "Mad Max" scenario, but something different out of American history with which most of us are unfamiliar. A violent clash of Irish immigrants and anti-immigrants then ensues, preparing us not only for the individual human drama of the main characters, but for a drama much larger than those characters, and the horrific nature of the violence is cinematically accentuated by the staining of the snow-covered ground underlying the feet of the combatants with crimson (and, yes copious, blood). From this point on we are led further and deeper into the lives of the main characters, with the backdrop of a burgeoning metropolis rife with political corruption and a nation divided by the Civil War. The various effects that these larger issues have, or do not have, on all of the characters populating this movie is sometimes apparent, sometimes not, which is a tribute to the intellectual aspect of the film -- it lets the viewer think, ponder, and reach individual insights and conclusions. The heart and soul of mid-19th Century Irish immigration, prejudice and poverty are well-portrayed with immaculate attention to detail in all aspects of film-making, most notably acting, set decoration, costuming, and cinematography, truly made to be seen on a big theatrical movie screen (those who wait for this to be released on dvd for their smaller home screens will have missed something special).