An American history lesson for adults

Rating: Null/10 (19 January 2003)

I absolutely disagree with all those peoples considering GANGS OF NEW YORK a minor Scorsese's movie. Scorsece had created different kinds of masterpieces on different subjects, and also some failures ( which is not the case).
After the incredible filmed and orchestrated beginning battle, seems start to look rather conventional (Father killed, son looking for revenge), but a few minutes later, you realize that things are a lot more complicated than originally seemed. That the story keeps twisting every time, because the main characters (specially THE BUTCHER played by Day-Lewis) are three dimensional human beings so it is not to easy to judge them as saints or evil. However, with all the moral ambiguities growing every second, the story is just an excuse to glue several historical facts (as the infamous CONSCRIPTION DRAFT), to tell the chronicle an important part of a young nation, but most of all, to make the MOST IMPORTANT STATEMENT ABOUT RACISM ever delivered (Jewish were not the target here and even Black people were not the main focus; just Europeans against Europeans).

Is very hard to accept that most of the blood splatter on the birth of this nation was related to racial issues. My feeling (based on the last scene which clearly show the TWIN TOWERS) is that Scorsece is making an analogy between past and present events. It will be up to each viewer to agree or argue that.
The movie itself is not perfect, but with a running time of more than two hours and a half, some things could fail. One of them is the uninteresting love story between Amsterdam(Di Caprio ) and Jenny (Diaz). Probably the only conventionalism in the movie, the lack of passion in the two scenes together is something I blame more to the Director than the actors.
Scorsece eliminated any moment of erotic or sexual tension between these two characters when the first scene together was so promising . Probably as a compensation, he kept lots of breast (not full nudity only breasts) on other gratuitous scenes. There was a matter of MPAA rating (I heard that the European version is longer and a lot more sexual), which is another stupid thing. I don't think kids below 17 could be interested or should see this movie, then what is the reason to cut it ?.
Performances, are a mixed bag. Daniel Day Lewis is SUPERB and Oscar worthy. Just a notch down are Liam Neeson, Jim Broadbent, John C Reilly and Brendan Gleeson; all of them creating ambiguous characters. Di Caprio, does a good job, and is not miscast as many people believe, but his character has not many more possibilities. Cameron Diaz, gives an almost decent performance, but her Jenny, is not really more than accessory to keep things running so or writers did not developed or it was left on the cutting room.