epic

Rating: Null/10 (2 January 2003)

This picture begins with a battle bloodier than anything you'll see in The Two Towers, fought in a world less familiar to most of us than Tolkien's Middle-earth. In the New York of 1846, when few Americans owned guns, the gangs of the Five Points neighbourhood do battle with clubs, swords, home-made battleaxes. It's tribal warfare on a pattern thousands of years old - the sort of fight that starts with rival warriors chanting their lineages and grievances, and ends, in this case, with Bill the Butcher's scream of triumph over his fallen enemy, "Priest" Vallon: "See! Who is this that lies beneath my knife?!" - a homeric line uttered in an accent that might one day become Brooklynese. Let Vallon's body be buried with honour, orders the Butcher, and let his son be given to the Law. Not surprisingly, young Amsterdam Vallon returns 16 years later as Leonardo DiCaprio, burning to avenge his father. Like Hamlet, he takes the rest of the story to do so. Unlike Hamlet, we can kind of understand his slowness, given that he barely knew the man he's avenging, and the man he's supposed to kill takes him into his gang and all but adopts him. Does Bill suspect "his boy" is the son of his most admired enemy? Then there's the pickpocket, Jenny Everdine - is she Bill's daughter? His mistress? Both? Scorcese tells a big operatic story here, and if you're not into gore, honour, violence, social history and myth, then I'd advise you to skip it. You'd also better be prepared to spot and figure out the period details - although the more difficult ones, like the names for the different kinds of thief, do get explained. Refreshingly for a historical film, the hero isn't more enlightened than anyone else of his time - Amsterdam's the sort who before a battle prays fervently to the Virgin that his sword might drink its fill of his enemy's blood. Cameron Diaz, too, is one of the few Hollywood actresses I've ever found believable. When we first see her, she looks too clean for the Five Points - but that's because she's going uptown on a job. She gets progressively grubbier as the story goes on. It's true, though, that Day-Lewis' Bill the Butcher is the real reason to see this film. Anyone who complains about scenery-chewing is missing the point- Bill uses "the spectacle of fearsome acts" to maintain order, the only way he knows how. Brutal, witty, bigoted and ferociously honest (for a criminal), Bill is someone you wouldn't want to meet, yet need to believe really existed (he is in fact modelled on a real gangster of the period). Also, unlike most people who call themselves "the Butcher," he actually is a real butcher ( rarely has royal favour been so concrete as the raw steaks Bill distributes among his vassals and dependents). In the end, of course, Bill's ritualistic world and fearsome code of honour cannot survive. As he and Amsterdam fight their personal battle to the death, the city around them is being levelled by the Draft Riots and the technology of the Civil War, and it's like watching two medieval knights trying to fight one-on-one in the midst of the Somme. For anyone who has ever suspected the US is a wondrous land of screwed-up giants, Gangs offers a lesson in how it got that way.