Vapid Story & Gratuitous Violence Nicely Photographed

Rating: Null/10 (29 December 2002)

Scorcese should not have allowed this movie to be released with his name on it. I've seen computer games with more nuanced characters. It has nothing. Not even its highly touted period authenticity...the carefully detailed costumes reek only of budget excess; the well researched dirt may be the right color and consistency but it looks antiseptic on the face of Pretty Leonardo There is no message...we all know that violence begets violence and that fear alone is the fuel of bullies. There was NO character development. The film does remind us that the Italians are the world's best studio set designers, and that any movie with more than a dozen associate and co-associate producers is doomed to sink to the lowest common denominator of Hollywood's creative courage. There was one moment at the very end of the film that offered a crazy opportunity for redeeming inspiration. The New York Skyline rises in a series of slow dissolves from the rat infested wharves to the tenements and Flatiron building, adding the Chrysler, Empire State etc, until finally, in the final dissolve, the twin towers joined the montage. If the towers had then disappeared, another historical victim of the power lust, then the cycle of senseless violence would have turned into 2:45 minute shaggy dog story. Live by the sword, die by the sword. I wonder if anyone in Washington would get it.