Oh Dear God. SPOILER WARNING

Rating: Null/10 (5 February 2003)

SPOILER WARNING What GONY shows us is a portrait of a film-maker in decline. Martin Scorsese - practically a god to a certain generation of film-goers - has here made his most anonymous, bland, banal piece of work. The worst thing I can say about this film is that it looks like it could have been directed by anyone. Gone are MS's trademark flourishes (fluid camerawork, rapid editing, freeze-frame) only to be replaced with a dull flat style that, when coupled with the badly-written and ill-judged story, only serves to make the film a total bore. For the record, GONY is about fathers and sons (yawn - isn't just about every over-rated US movie about fathers and sons these days?), macho posturing (done so much better in earlier Scorsese movies - "Taxi Driver", "Mean Streets", "GoodFellas") and American history (potentially very interesting indeed, but here turned into a cartoon of corrupt politicians and unintentionally hilarious gang warfare). The opening fight scene, after several minutes of build-up involving costumes and weaponry straight out of "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome", is in slow-motion, with naff rock soundtrack accompaniment, for gawd's sake. The film is set in New York, "lovingly-recreated" in an Italian studio. So, it looks expensive but fake. The cgi effects are feeble. The costumes, dialogue and action are inane and at times laughable.
For all the critical praise heaped on Daniel Day Lewis's performance, one cannot help wondering what anyone expected - the man is a fine actor; of course he is going to give a good performance. That is what he does. Leo and Cameron are as good as anyone could be when dealing with such under-written roles. Leo alternates between seething rage at his father's death (hey, ass-hole, your dad was leader of a gang of vicious thugs - how did you expect he was going to die?) and a weird and under-developed admiration for Day-Lewis's character. Bill the Butcher takes Leo under his wing (for no sensible reason, other than that the plot of the film demands that he do so) thus leading the way to potential tension between the forces at work on Leo. Will he save Bill or kill him? Does anyone care? Will Bill find out that he has taken under his wing the son of some geezer he killed? Does anyone care? Luckily for Bill the only person who seeks revenge against him is Leo. No doubt Bill has quite a few enemies, but Leo is the only one to do anything about it. Cameron turns up at convenient moments, and disappears at equally convenient moments, to fit in with the obvious mechanics of the plot. A black character is wheeled out for some kind of spurious racism-is-bad message at the end, in such a patronising and unbelievable bit of action that it makes me wince to think about it. Really, all the critics falling over themselves to praise this hogwash ought to be ashamed of themselves. There's nothing in this film to redeem it. Technically it is awful, perhaps Scorsese's worst effort yet (I haven't seen "Bringing out the Dead" but I HAVE seen "Kundun", so I know what I'm talking about). Just think of all the great movies that could have been made with the 100+ mill that this film flushed down the jakes. Avoid this nonsense at all costs. Oh, and finally, don't, please, bang on about Scorsese producing a four hour director's cut on DVD blah blah blah it said so in Empire magazine, blah blah blah which will show his true artistic vision. I don't CARE.