Mean streets of New York

Rating: 10/10 (5 June 2006)

Gangs of New York was the best film released in Ireland in 2003 and a film that makes me proud to be Irish. The film opens with a stunning set-piece in a snowscape in New York's Five Points in which the Natives, led by Daniel Day-Lewis, overpower the immigrants, known as the Dead Rabbits. The film follows the quest for revenge of the son of a slain immigrant
The story is set in the era of the arrival of floods of Irish immigrants escaping the Famine in their native land.
The film goes on to take in the Draft Riots during the American Civil War and, on a great canvas, Martin Scorsese paints an unforgettable portrait of the foundational years of the city of New York and sets us straight on what life was like on the mean streets of New York in those years.
This is film-making at its greatest and Scorsese's superb direction is complemented by the sinister cinematography of Michael Ballhaus. The best shot of the film is when Leonardo Di Caprio's character discards his Bible, tossing it off the bridge and we have a close-up shot of the Bible crashing onto the river surface, displacing its own weight in water.
Scorsese's sense of yearning for something lost in his own city comes across. The concluding time travels shots of the New York skyscape, shots so full of heartbreak and lost eras. Shots so evocative of lives and loves past in the world's greatest city. New York, New York - one hell of a town. The Twin Towers feature in these closing shots and stand in this worthy film as a lasting tribute and monument to the courage of the people of New York on that fateful September day.