Vapid story

Rating: 2/10 (13 April 2016)

As a young kid Leonardo DiCaprio's sees his dad killed by Daniel Day- Lewis in a street squabble between immigrants of all feathers and the natives. Not the Indian natives mind you, but those white dudes born and raised in the US from fathers who stole the country from those other natives a few generations before, as opposed to all the immigrants that come over from Europe and want their share of prosperity there and then. Get of my property! So DiCaprio swears to do Day-Lewis in when he has grown up. The movie then fast forwards sixteen years into the future to come to a halt around the time of the civil war. We learn that Leonardo's desire to kill Day-Lewis has not dampened yet and he learned all kinds of usual skills that help progress him and society towards a better one.Of course not: he just knows how to kill people with a knife.
Perhaps the movie has some deeper meaning by showing how utter vapid the life of Di Caprio is as it is solely geared towards one violent goal. If he is to represent the Irish immigrants that came to eek out an existence it is lost on me. Blame me for not getting it.
The next two hours then might see interesting things about the historical background of the US in the late 19th century or even about the life of the immigrants, but nope.. it is all about a gang of criminals. The kind that plague society any time in any setting and is filled with thugs, hoodlums, scumbags, crooks, sadists and profiteers and anyone else preying on other people. But perhaps that was the message?The US is made by criminals?
It takes DiCaprio around two hours to do in Day-Lewis, which he could have done by gunning the guy down in the first 15 minutes, but nope, he needs to linger because of reasons. Moral ones. DiCaprio shows nothing redeemable and what I see is a person who has thrown away his life and sense by wanting to destroy another for nothing but revenge. No noble goal is guiding him. It is just bloody revenge.Get a life dude! There is some kind of romancing going on between him and Cameron Diaz, which is probably in there just to extend the movie even further for it feels like they just go through the motions. Diaz is a unlikable as the others, only she is female, so maybe that is her excuse.
For my life I can't figure out why anyone would sit through this movie that has such unlikable lurid characters. Perhaps the acting is great, but really, why would you watch two hours of bloody violence, an awkward romance and nothing else? There is another movie about gangs called the Godfather, which is also about a group of criminals and also about immigrants. It has drama, character building and other things going for it. This movie just can't compare to it. It is almost as if Scorsese wanted to redo the Godfather in another time, like a precursor, but simply lacks the quality of writing to help him tell the tale. Perhaps Scorsese might have given Shakespeare a try by turning it into a west side story kind of thing, but it has nothing of the love story, nothing of the sad tale. It is just a boring movie about one guy wanting to do in another and taking two hours to do it.