This movie was okay...

Rating: 7/10 (18 February 2003)

I was able to sit through the three hours but I didn't come out of this movie thinking it to be a masterpiece in filmmaking as many have declared. For starters, I was eager to see this movie because I'm a huge New York City history buff, and I wanted to see Scorcese's depiction of the Five Points. Unfortunately, the relatively mindless and overused plot (son wants to avenge father's death) interfered with what otherwise would have been a pretty good historical fiction account. To those that disbelieved that New York was really as it was portrayed in the movie, all you have to do is read any book about the Five Points (now, Chinatown) to know that it is historically one of the worst urban slums in history, albeit not nearly as bad as some of the then contemporary writers made it out to be. To that end, the movie was fairly faithful, with the exception that I think the timing of the historical characters to the events that actually took place were a little off. Although the acting was decent, parts of the script, and especially the plot, were deplorable. Overall, I give the movie was okay... it's not the type of movie I would rave about or recommend unless someone wants to see a brilliant acting performance from Daniel Day Lewis. I just think given the movie's tremendous budget, Scorcese could have done a LOT better.