An American Masterpiece

Rating: 10/10 (13 December 2004)

The depth and complexity of this movie is amazing. Scorsese truly succeeds in giving us a movie where the setting is as much a character as the people. Somehow the viewer comes to feel that this story couldn't take place anywhere else than New York.
I loved the parallels in the lives of the two main characters. Bill the Butcher was defeated by Priest Vallon, but his life was spared. He then rose again to defeat and kill Priest. Amsterdam Vallon could have been killed once his treachery was revealed, but Bill spared him, and act which eventually spelled Bill's doom.
The father-son relationships are also powerful. Young Vallon's love for his father drives him to plot Bill's downfall. To enact this revenge, he must get close to Bill. So close, that Bill starts to see Amsterdam as the son he never had. It also seems as though young Vallon has to fight his own growing affection for Bill in order to try and kill him.
This film could be compared with Hugo's 'Les Miserables'. Both are stories of a set of people and how their lives are shaped by the time and place they are in, set against an epic backdrop of large-scale strife and turmoil. In Hugo's work, it is the lives and tribulations of Valjean, Javert, Marius, and Cossette set in revolutionary France, culminating in the battles at the barricades. In 'Gangs', it is the lives of young Vallon, Bill the Butcher, Jenny Everdeane, and Johnny Sirroco set in the slums of Civil War-era New York, ending with the Draft Riots.
This movie is a masterpiece. I give it 10/10.