Ultimately disappointing

Rating: 6/10 (23 February 2003)

I took the day off work to see this film going into with fairly high expectations. I mean it has almost everything you would associate with a good movie, an excellent cast, a wonderful director and a epic length. But alas I came out of the theatre feeling empty and almost cheated of my money.
You start with an interesting period of history that most people are not well versed in, put a good old revenge story in, build it up to a strong climax and destroy it all with a chaotic final act that negates everything that has come before.
If only Scorsese had cut off everything that came after the Cameron Diaz / Daniel Day Lewis knife-throwing scene and rebuilt the movie with a decent ending this movie might go down as one of the best films ever made, but unfortunately it wont, the fact that is has been nominated for Best Picture and Best Director show how far the Oscars have fallen in awarding not excellence but rewarding strong marketing campaigns.
Avoiding the pettiness that is picking out the disappearing/reappearing accents and scars, I would award this 3/5 primarily for the first two acts when sadly if it had followed through it could have been a 5/5
3/5 on the watched far too many movies scale.