Savage, flawed, and magnificent

Rating: Null/10 (11 August 2004)

Warning: spoilers.
In the squalid underworld of 1850's New York, moustachioed lunatic Bill the Butcher leads gangs of established Americans against immigrant (mainly Irish) gangs, led by the more friendly Priest Vallon. In a pitched battle Bill kills Vallon, and Vallon's young son escapes. A dozen years later, Vallon's now adult son Amsterdam returns to the city incognito, to worm his way into Bill's gang and assassinate him in revenge.
Here is a book that cried out to be filmed. Instead of following Herbert Asbury's questionably accurate history book through a hundred years, Scorcese focuses on the Draft Riots of the Civil War, blending the most notorious characters of the day to create imaginary figures who are largely based on life.
The first impression I had was of staggering squalor, as the gangs of the Five Point tenements fight over turf and the feeble proceeds of theft. The second was of an almost cartoonish, grotesque violence: it's as though Dickens' characters have gone berserk. People knife, beat and hack one another to death; ears and noses are sliced off, bodies hacked as casually as the meat that Bill serves up for a living. Over it all preside the corrupt politicians of Tammany Hall, using the gangs to intimidate voters their way. Nobody is clean.
Scorcese's New York looks incredible. The sets are astonishing, and the production lavish. The only jarring visual aspect is that the actors are not more disease-ridden and sickly. Even the battle-scenes, oddly, are a little squeaky-clean, despite their striving for gritty realism. In one fight, Amsterdam punches a man five times in the face, who a few minutes later is seen without even a trace of a black eye. Given the savagery of the rest of the film - it wholly deserves its certificate - it is surprising that this has been cleaned away. Not that one would want to see much more gore than there already is...
The acting is pretty good, overall. Brendan Gleeson is solid, if unexceptional, Liam Neeson (Priest Vallon) is excellent but underused, and Cameron Diaz adapts to the underworld surprisingly well. Top marks, though, must go to Daniel Day Lewis as the ogre-like, deranged Bill the Butcher, by turns Jolly Uncle and glowering maniac. Dandyish and brutal, he is both overplayed and convincing, like Anthony Hopkins' Lecter. The only weak link is Leonardo Di Caprio as Amsterdam, who is far too slick and pretty for this kind of world. He would not make a convincing Victorian shop assistant, let alone a hardened killer.
The most serious flaw in the film, however, comes two thirds of the way through. Amsterdam is alone and weak, apparently without face in the underworld, and suddenly ten men spring to his side and help him form a gang of his own. No reason is given for this: the impression given all along is that the gangsters are ruthless and untrustworthy, even joining up with Bill against their fellow Irishmen if it furthers their careers. It feels as through the end hour has been badly cut, and it damages the film.
The finale is unmitigatedly downbeat, as a racist mob runs amok in order to avoid the draft. It is hard to tell whether we are to pity these people or see them as savages, and the meaning of the ending is unclear. If America was born in the streets, as the tag line suggests, it was born from vicious rioters, not the honest toil of proleterians, as the film seems to want to suggest. You can read the ending two ways: perhaps the riot does bring solidarity to the people of New York, or perhaps it is the final outburst of a conflict that even Amsterdam seems to recognise as pointless at the end of this flawed, grimly magnificent film.