Half-baked acting plus half-finished script equals one poor movie

Rating: 1/10 (3 July 2003)

Overwrought, overlong, meandering, flabby, sentimentalised, poorly scripted, indulgent twaddle from one of the masters of modern film-making. How did it happen? If it had been made on a shoe-string by an idiot it would hardly matter but it cost a fortune and it was still rubbish. With an utterly incoherent story and dreadful acting from all but Day Lewis this was more reminiscent of The Muppets Take Manhattan than Goodfellas. The scene that summed up the film's failings was Day-Lewis draped in a US flag telling DiCaprio how his amazing energy reminded him of The Priest. The flag was just such simplistic, condescending, tacked-on profundity and DiCaprio has as much dynamism as a wilted lettuce on legs! Why did no-one work on the script? It's like a first draft, full of loose ends, cliches, historical inaccuracies and laughably second-rate Oirishisms. Save yourself several hours of life and don't bother with it.