"A Fist Full Of Phony Scenery" -- What a substandard piece of crap! A waste of talent and time. BO---RING!!!!

Rating: 3/10 (28 December 2002)

Bad movie. It looked like one of those stale 1972 movies. It also continually reminded me of "A Fist Full of Dollars" and similar old timey Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns. You know, those cheap-o movies with only two sets that look fake and flat. Oh wait.... it was exactly like a 1950s live TV drama. Those were excusable in the early days of television--- all the action takes place on essentially the same set on a small stage. But in these modern times?
"Gangs of New York" may disconcert some because the historical premises are not widely known. But the problems with "Gangs of New York" go far beyond any potential discomfort with those novelties.
As an epic, this is too stylized. As a style piece, it isn't stylistic enough. It has a claustrophobic feel--- as if all the action takes place on the same small set. Cut-aways to an artist's drawing of Manhattan at the beginning and the end of the movie try to give us a geography and a context, but they only remind us we are NOT seeing a large city. The suffocatingly small sets are more suited to a stage musical, and an old stale one at that--- something forgettable from the 70s.
I was reminded of "Goodfellas"--- a movie that film essayists and others revere. I saw it, and was affected by its ugliness and brutality. Why did Scorcese feel the need to make that one? "Goodfellas" is so ugly as to be a psychic and emotional pollution, a form of "vibe abuse." "Gangs of New York" is similar--- one wonders what Scorcese's point was. Are we supposed to think that immigrants were crazy? That Europeans were nuts? That Irish are "bad"? Or, Irish are "good"? New York had a past? The mid 1800's sucked as a century? I think everybody's life the world over sucked in those days. Remember, the real-life historical Irish evidently thought what they had in New York, Daniel Day-Lewis, Jim Broadbent, Cameron Diaz and all--- was nonetheless better than what they had fled in Britain.
But what's the point here? ANY point? This movie seems so unnecessary, and thus such a waste. In any event, it is boring. I mean BORING!