Needs a visit to the editing room!!!

Rating: Null/10 (6 January 2003)

Gangs Of New York, directed by Martin Scorsese has been long anticipated. It was slated for release over a year ago, but was pushed back because of postproduction issues. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Cameron Diaz, Gangs tells the tail of a young man (Dicaprio) bent on revenging his fathers death at the hands of a rival gang leader (Day-Lewis) in Civil War Era New York City.
The film has many problems, the biggest being its unnecessarily long length. Clocking in at 2 hours and 45 minutes, Gangs could have told its story in less than 2 hours in a much more effective manner which would have kept its audience entertained throughout. The middle of the film needed a visit to the editing room most of all. I found many of the slow paced dialog scenes both uninteresting and unnecessary to forward the plot. The cinematography was good, but not great. It left me wanting to see moreÂ…more of the city, more of the harbor.
The one place the film does excel is in its 20-minute climax. If I didn't have to suffer through the films first 2 hours, I might have been tempted to give the film a good review based on that very compelling sequence. Unfortunately since I did have to waste two hours of my life to get to that point, I just cannot recommend this film.