What do you do when you lose your way in the story?

Rating: Null/10 (12 February 2003)

Gangs is one of those movies that could only have been made with a director like Martin Scorcese at the helm - 2 hours and 40 minutes? No problem. Graphic violence? No sweat. A movie with almost no story? You bet.
The story itself starts promisingly enough: Two rival gangs in mid 1800 America vie to see "who will hold sway over these five corners" as the villian, Bill "The Butcher" Cutter (you don't suppose he could have been named anything else?) growls before leading his group of men to do battle with another group called The Dead Rabbits (why they are called that is never really made clear in the story - supposedly a dead rabbit is supposed to represent freedom or something). The combat lasts a few minutes (though there were a few seconds when the editing looked so bad, I thought I was watching American Ninja 5 - a surprise for a Scorcese movie) before the leader of the Dead Rabbits is killed, with his kid watching from the sidelines. The kid is sent to an orphanage school, and all is forgotten about him for 16 years until he grows up to be Leo DiCaprio. After that... well, the thrust of the story seems to lead you to believe that Leo's Amsterdam will try finding a way to kill Bill - but for some reason, it takes him nearly 2 hours before he makes his first attempt. He reasons that he wants to kill Bill in front of everybody so they could see what would happen to him (not that most kings are actually assassinated in full view of the public, as Amsterdam mulls in one of MANY voice-over thoughts). For nearly 2 hours, we see him getting closer and closer to Bill - but showing virtually no signs of his inner struggle. Only when he sees a picture of his dead father - which Bill has hanging in tribute 'to the one man worthy of me' does he show any kind of emotion. After he finally makes an attempt on Bill's life, he spends the remainintg 40 minutes mulling what to do next (which inexplicably includes trying to hurt Bill politically) before finally getting a group of people together for the last big showdown - but even this is a letdown, as it's completely overwhelmed by a secondary storyline (about the people rioting because of the draft for the Civil War). We invest 2 1/2 hours for the son to wreak holy vengeance on his father's murderer - and it turns into something of a TKO instead. Part of the problem I had with this story was the inclusion of Jenny, a woman (played by Cameron Diaz) who doesn't seem to have a true sense of self. At the beginning, she's a pickpocket and a thief. Once Leo runs into her (and she lifts him of a personal memento), she holds a knife to his throat - and from then on she doesn't steal or pickpocket, because she's too much in love with Amsterdam. This would be bad enough, but what makes it even more strange is that there is supposed to be something between Jenny and Amsterdam's friend - at least in HIS mind, there should be - even though she is supposedly Bill's woman. The friend gets incredibly jealous when Ansterdam finally has sex with Jenny - but when Bill sees the two of them together in bed, he doesn't even bat an eye. Amsterdam's friend winds up telling Bill who Amsterdam really is - and Bill kills him for it. If you were able to make sense out of this past paragraph, you might have a future as a screenwriter for Martin Scorcese. Not all of the movie is bad. The visuals are stunning, and the movie does take an unflinching look at life in New York under the sway of "Boss Tweed" as he was known when he was mayor of New York (quick history fact - Tammany Hall, which is mentioned in the movie as a courthouse Tweed wants to build, was recently converted into the new headquarters for the NY Teacher's Association by Mayor Bloomberg, another extremely rich person. It goes to show that God DOES have a sense of irony). Corruption was rampant in that time, and people did whatever they could to make a living. In that sense, this movie does deserve praise for not backing away from this sensitive subject. However - I just wish that the story could have been more compelling - or at least a lot shorter (if this had not been commissioned by the director, the script would easily have had 40 minutes or so lopped off the top, which actually might have made it a better movie). Overall - I'd either go see it in a matinee or wait until it comes out in Blockbuster so you can rent it and fast forward through the boring parts - because trust me, there are a LOT of them in this movie.