Pompous disjointed mess

Rating: 1/10 (17 February 2003)

I think a lot of people are going easy on this film, as the name Scorcese appears on the credits. People are trying to find something that clearly isn't there.
In my opinion, this film has nothing going for it. Everything about it is bad or wrong. The acting, the script, the editing, the sets, everything.
A lot of people mention DDL acting as brilliant, when in fact all he does is overact a very unbelievable character. I don't see too much skill in that. In fact his whole character, like all the characters in this film, are very poorly developed. In reality no one is just bad and no one is just good. DDL's one dimensional character is just portrayed as nasty.
The story itself, what little is there, is a presented in such a claustrophobic manner. None the of sets look realistic, it always feels like a studio set. Even though I know it was made on a huge back lot.

One theme that bothered me was this simplistic racism in the movie. The Irish were good, the Irish liked black people, etc, where as everyone else was evil and racist.
I'm sure in the time period that murder and suffering were common place, but I'm also sure compassion and caring existed to some degree, surely even in those times there was some form of law.
Overall a mess of a film, it had no punch, no direction, poor acting and no real story of mention.