Yes, it's flawed--but Daniel Day-Lewis is back, and in fine form!

Rating: 7/10 (30 December 2002)

It's good to know that Daniel Day-Lewis remains one of the finest actors in movies; his performance as "the Butcher" will live in my memory. Even his dialect was carefully worked out and is apparently as faithful to what we know of the NYC dialect of that era as it can be. His work is so strong and fine that it makes the choice of Leonardo DiCaprio for the other lead all the more unfortunate. DiCaprio has shown that he can act, given the right material and setting (Catch Me If You Can, for example), but I simply couldn't suspend my disbelief to the point where I could accept him as tough enough to stand up to "the Butcher," or charismatic enough for the Irish to rally around. There was something terminally callow in his work, for my taste, and that, of course, has to be a major drawback in this extremely ambitious and frequently fascinating movie. Visually, Scorsese has achieved something remarkable: he has given us a stunning picture of the seamiest part of New York City in the mid-nineteenth century, one that tallies remarkably well with the images I've seen, and seems to come straight out of Luc Sante's wonderful book, Low Life. Also, the movie speaks effectively to a point made by the character--Mr. Schermerhorn, I believe--who says that it's always possible to pay half the poor of the city to kill the other half. Ultimately, both the nativists and the immigrants, Irish and others, constantly at each others' throats, were the victims of the wealthy merchants and politicians who generally managed to stay safely uptown, out of the muck. (POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD)I wish that the Draft Riots had been more central to the plot or, at least, had been dealt with more straightforwardly. The movie gives rather short shrift to the race hatred that was a central motivation to the rioters. Most of the riot's victims, after all, were black--until the military took their toll. I thought that giving Amsterdam and his allies one black friend seemed an attempt to duck an unpalatable fact: just as the nativists loathed the Irish, those Irish newcomers loathed the blacks who, they believed, were costing them their livelihood. There's a false note there. I had initially felt that the climactic battle didn't provide what I'd wanted--a knockdown brawl between the Butcher and Amsterdam, but, on reflection, I decided that that was exactly the point. Both those characters, as well as their allies, were equally victims of the prevailing political and economic power structure of the time.(END SPOILER) On balance, I recommend this movie on the strengths of Daniel Day-Lewis's stunning performance and the magnificent recreation of New York City's lower depths from a long-dead era. Those virtues made the film worth the seeing, despite its flaws.