People Are Panning This, But Gushing Over Lord of the Rings?

Rating: 9/10 (29 December 2002)

Now wait a minute, I love Tolkien and think the LOTR are great, but I'm shocked that "Two Towers" is now ranked #10 on IMDB with a 9.0 rating and Gangs of New York is way down off the list at a (currently) 7.8 rating. I thought Scorcese did an excellent job and although I am no fan of Leo, he wasn't all that bad. Of course Daniel Day Lewis was great and the supporting actors were excellent.
It was nice for once to see a historical movie of epic proportions that wasn't just a jingoistic postcard and showed America in all the nasty xenophobic and blood & guts glory. And it allows you to draw parallels with current events and our own little xenophobia and political crimes of today, which is what good history should do no matter what Henry Ford said. Perhaps there was a bit too much gratuitous violence but then again can you really sugar-coat a Civil War battle or a lynch mob or just the mob in general? Everybody was a villain in the film, just as often in real life there are no real heros to look up to. Leo's character "Amsterdam" was every bit as bloodthirsty as Lewis' Bill Cutting; if not worse since at least Bill fights in hand-to-hand combat while Leo prefers to sneak up through the ranks and presumably pull an "inside job."
It's just too bad that so many people just looking for the latest "shock & grab" miss some of the bigger themes of the movie; yet they presumably find all sorts of "meaningful" things in "Eight Mile" and LOTR.