Now we know why Scorsese took two years to release it

Rating: Null/10 (30 December 2002)

I went to this movie with very high hopes. Hopes that were dashed as soon as the first fight scene got underway. Scorsese knows how to choreograph violence, to be sure, but he had to include a heavy-metal soundtrack to accompany it. That gimmick reminded me of "The Scorpion King", and in the end, that's about how good this movie was too. DiCaprio, true to form, delivered a performance that was on the ability level of a high school senior play. I didn't buy the notion that this guy would rise to the top of a gang of toughs, not for one second. He's a pretty boy, and I would have thought that a director of toughs like Scorsese would have understood that.
It's not necessary to the artistic or commercial success (or failure) of a film, but it should be pointed out that the story is a total rape of actual history. While Scorsese may be entitled to make an impressionistic "opera" about the real events, he is being ridiculous in suggesting that an Irish gang leader in 1863 would be sympathetic to African-Americans, but I guess he thinks that depicting otherwise would tarnish his hero too much in the audience's eyes. Also, he makes Tammany Hall and the Democrats' adversaries out to be the Know-Nothing Party, which had already broken up before the Civil War. But depicting the actual opposition, i.e., the Republican Party, would have been embarrassing for Scorsese, inasmuch as having them in the movie would have had to have made DiCaprio et al. as the political force a) actively hostile to blacks and to abolition, and b) at best indifferent to maintaining the Union.