Sordid unrelenting blood bath

Rating: 1/10 (22 December 2002)

What can be said of a film where the best scenes were the few seconds at the end, where the New York skyline morphed from the slums of Five Points to the skyline pre September 11, 2001.
This film may appeal to those who want to see a violent blood bath set in grimy surroundings and played out by Hogarthian degenerates, but it is not in any way entertainment. I kept waiting for Dante's Inferno to open up and swallow them into the fiery furnace. The films plods unrelentingly through human misery and violence for more than two and a half hours. Never once did I get the feeling that it may not be pleasant to watch, but at least it was raising my consciousness. This was just a film of violence, blood lust and misery, as repulsive as Kurasawa's "The Lower Depths".

I felt as if the director was making a film about depravity for the sake of depravity. As if there should be a voiceover stating that "In the Casbah/slums of Shanghai/Limehouse/Paris/Bombay every vice is catered to. Murder, drugs, vice, white slavery. No one asks questions, no one knows your name, you can hide or disappear, or make someone disappear." The opening voiceover from all those black and white films noire - Algiers, Shanghai Gesture, etc. This is debauchery from the comfort of your cinema seat.

Daniel Day-Lewis's ludicrous leering mustachioed Victorian melodrama villain robbed the film of any credibility and belonged to vaudeville. Far and away the only performance worth watching was Jim Broadbent as Boss Tweed. The overrated and unappealing Cameron Diaz and Leonardo diCaprio deserved each other.
I can now understand why comedies and musicals did so well during the depression. Some of us go to the cinema to be uplifted and entertained. There is beauty in the world if you want to look for it.