How do you like your cuts?

Rating: 5/10 (6 September 2003)

Martin Scorsese is many things to many people, but to me, the most important facet of his personality was his resurrecting Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, and their team, The Archers, from the dustbin of neglect. That should secure his place in cinema heaven for sure. This particular film, unfortunately, once again reveals a facet of the great director's personality I just cannot understand. And that is his seemingly glorification of violence almost to the point of it being another "star" of the film. Do audiences really need this to think a movie "great"? Apparently so. Would Taxi Driver make it without the gratuitous violence...probably not. Unfortunately, there is a "fascination" attached to violence that attracts something in the human spirit. Witness the rushing of people to an automobile accident or a barn fire or some such calamity. But is it necessary to "make art"? Powell and Pressburger kept it to a minimum, or, so choreographed it to become well, almost, non-violence...a dance perhaps. For me, Gangs of New York was 167 minutes too long a voyage on a Styx of red!