This Movie Really Sucked

Rating: 3/10 (22 December 2002)

I've been waiting for Scorsese's much-hyped "masterpiece" about New York in the mid-19th Century. Two days after it came out (December 20, 2002), I saw it.
What a terrible disappointment.
It's not that Scorsese isn't a brilliant director. He is, "Goodfellas" is one of my top 10 movies of all time. It's not that he didn't assemble a stellar cast of top-notch actors. And it's certainly not the sets: The recreation of the "Five Points" section of New York is awesome, the buildings, the costumes, the speech, everything.
The problem is that the characters and the plot are silly and unbelievable. During the movie, while watching the antics of "Amsterdam Vallon" "Bill the Butcher" and "Jenny Everdeane," all I could think was what simplistic, cartoonish characters they were, and how did the dialogue in the final script ever get approved? Since this movie is supposed to be based on "true" events, did the producers of this film think that the audience for this movie consisted of fools who'd believe that any of this actually happened the way it's portrayed? And if it's "Just A Movie," then why the striving for historical authenticity?
I kept looking at my watch wondering when this silly, cliched, pretentious, truly awful movie was going to end, and when it did, I felt a tremendous sense of relief. It's not often I'd give a movie 3 out of 10, but this big-budget stinker deserves it.