A huge disappointment

Rating: 2/10 (10 March 2003)

As a big fan and great respecter of Martin Scorsese, counting Taxi
Driver, Mean Streets, The King of Comedy, and The Last
Temptation of Christ among my alltime favorite films (sorry,
Raging Bull), I looked forward to Gangs of New York with huge
anticipation. I have to say I was let down.
The story was a typical tale of revenge and love, wrapped around
the political happenings during the early years of New York City.
Sounds interesting. Unfortunately, it wasn't.
The problem for me, primarily, was one of character development.
There was no change in any of the characters throughout the
movie. William Cutting (Daniel Day-Lewis) represented the old
guard, Amsterdam Vallon (Leonardo DiCaprio) represented the
new, and Boss Tweed (Jim Broadbent) was the political figure
who was really in command of the situation.
None of these characters grew at all during the movie. Cutting was
a believer in rule by violence right up to the end. Vallon was bent
on revenging his father's death, his only true motivation throughout
the film. Boss Tweed was a typical politician, playing both sides,
depending on which looked like the right horse at the time.
As for the acting, Broadbent did a great job as Boss Tweed, and
the smaller supporting roles were quite well done. Daniel
Day-Lewis was outstanding as Cutting, but his weird accent was
distracting right from the beginning. You may try to make an
argument that it was true to the time (which I doubt can be proven),
but to my ear it was quite false. DiCaprio suffered the same accent
problem, but, even worse, his screentime with Cameron Diaz was
much less than sizzling.
Another problem: I couldn't buy Diaz and DiCaprio together at all. I
guess maybe Diaz seems too old to play the role. While they are
not that far apart agewise in reality, in the movie they were both
supposed to be around 21 or so, and Diaz just couldn't pull it off. I
may be imagining that, but I can say this for sure: Diaz and
DiCaprio had no chemistry at all.
In essence, Gangs of New York is quite a boring film. The story is
interesting, that this is really the story of the formation of New York
City, but as cinema, it falls very short of the greatness attributed to
it. I can give it only 3 stars out of 10. Sorry, Mr. Scorsese.