I liked it for all the wrong reasons

Rating: Null/10 (28 April 2004)

Odd film. Both hated and loved.***SPOILERS WITHIN***
What was great? 1) The movie set was fabulous. Scorsese created a city that I could have watched for another hour and a half after the movie finished. Who cares where it was filmed? Purists whine that it was filmed in Italy. So what? 2) Daniel Day-Lewis. I hadn't researched the origins of his accent, but it sounds believable that his is an accurate mixture of British and Dutch. He played a bad, bad man, and he did it well. 3)History lesson. The depiction of the draft riots, though white washed from the actual race riots they were, spurred me on to read up on this forgotten pocket of history. 4)Liam Neeson as priest. He just kicks. Period.
What was okay? Cameron Diaz came and went. The more she fell in love with Amsterdam, the more irritating she got. DiCaprio was okay. I wasn't expecting much, he held his own. He's no Divine or Dolemite. Some of the characters, like the lady with the sharpened teeth in the opening fight scene who ends up a drunken tavern owner is lost along the way. The opening MTV fight scene was kind of surreal, and worked for me. It seemed out of place, though.
What sucked? The storyline. I have the feeling that this was a 5-hour movie (that originally was supposed to feature the Clash) that went into fast forward for the last 45 minutes. The Butcher death scene was so abbreviated, I'm sure there's a good 15 minute fight scene in the vault somewhere.
Big picture, Scorsese created a great set with some great characters and a mediocre story that grinds to a halt. He took on alot, and delivered on some. Still interesting enough to be able to say you saw every single damn Scorsese movie.