Deeply disappointing

Rating: Null/10 (22 December 2002)

Scorsese works best with character driven movies, these require interesting characters and strong actors, and this movie has neither. It is just a hodge podge, not very coherent, and the acting is fairly weak (though I have a soft spot for Daniel Day Lewis who is obviously just hamming it up).

You look at Taxi Driver, Good Fellas, Raging Bull etc. these were about mean, ugly characters, but they were interesting, and more importantly well developed. The characters in Gangs of New York are cookie cutter. I don't have really much else to say, but to the people that are fawning over this movie be careful that you aren't just fawning over Scorsese's past work and reading a bit much into this one. The man is a great director and artist, but even great artists can make junk.
The story line is there in bits and pieces but it never comes together. He should have taken a page from Terrence Mallick and gone all Thin Red Line on it, imagine how much more interesting and exciting it would be.