A Brilliant Mess!

Rating: 7/10 (18 April 2005)

What must life have been like in this dynamic early New York washed over by wave after wave of immigrants? Sure each wave was looked down on, racially abused. But don't worry they would find their place in a generation or two and then start to organise against the next wave of immigrants, human nature is wonderful. Scorcese had the chance to make a new classic, but you never feel that what is going on is real (when much of it actually was of course), we spend the whole film waiting for the anti-climactic showdown. I enjoyed the film, but can see why it wasn't a box-office success (as it should have been with all those big names) and didn't win any Oscars. Too many disparate threads, too ambitious too cheesy. But as I say a quite brilliant mess!