Epic, Grand, a great accomplishment, Joycean in magnitude.

Rating: Null/10 (6 August 2003)

I am a writer, not a film maker, and so I am willing to overlook the ineptitudes of casting someone like Di Caprio, or even Diaz in this film, though Lewis, amazing, outstanding, he deserves all the credit accounted to him.
A movie is flawed unwillingly by it's casting. That is not necessarily the fault of the director. If you look back, to the half and half movie (really a movie in three parts), Full Metal Jacket was to have cast Anthony Michael Hall as "Joker", and you reel at the consequences.
The beauty of this movie, and one must take this in consideration for all films or movements of multimedia, is in the scope of the storytelling. It moves us into a realm that seems almost, well, I'm sure, quite alien to us. It is almost science fiction, it is unknown to us, rather than the grim streets of Taxi Driver, or the commonality of Raging Bull, Casino, or Goodfellas, all fine films in their own right.
What I say is that, this film, unlike these others I have mentioned, attempts to accomplish the history of an unknown New York. It acts as a Ulysses, a book which spans one single day, for a history which we can scarcely claim as our own.
I would never cast Di Caprio in any part that required the least bit of genuine threat. Di Caprio by his own nature, and not the least of his acting ability which has never quite ever reached his abilities in ...Gilbert Grape, is simply not up to the part.
What captivates, and what holds you to this film, as I attempt to see in any film, is the length to which reality, or a reality is attempted. It becomes real to us, it is a history to us because of this endeavor. We become the victims of fiction and fact due to the absolute attention to detail. A detail, we can only assume is real, and yet, we have no choice but to believe it; to want to believe it, and that is the magick of film making that is achieved.
Anyone can ruin his own birthday party by denouncing the guests, but when it is wrapt in such luxury of fiction and wonderment, and is graced by even a few characters that we may call our own Molly Bloom, to do so is to put oneself in jeopardy of missing the beauty cast by someone such as Monet. Grand in the big picture, weak in the details, yet stunning still.