Not Rubbish But MAJOR Room For Improvment

Rating: 2/10 (11 January 2003)

I went to see this movie with High Expectations, I thought I was going to see a Martin Scorsese work of Genius on a par with Casino or Goodfellas.... It Fails. This Is NOT a Rubbish Movie, There where parts of It I quite Enjoyed, but not many and certainly not enough to keep me watching for THREE HOURS. The fact this was 3hrs long was not the reason I didn't like this movie, In fact many of my favorite movies (Lord Of The Rings, Dances With Wolves, Casino) where that long, The problem was that it just didn't have the pace or enough of a story to warrent that sort of screen time. Another thing that has bugged me is how over hyped this movie was. Day-Lewis was very good as Bill The Butcher BUT by no means should he win Best Actor for this role, the way he droned on sometimes made me want to get up and leave but I put this down more to the script than him. Leo was on a par with his usual stuff (I'll leave it up to you to decide if that is good or bad) and miscast in the role, he was too... well Leo for want of a better word. Diaz was as Stunning looking as always and was one of the only things worth keeping your eyes open for, her acting was OK but not her best work. All the others worked as well as they could with the material provided. My Main Gripe with this was the way the movie was padded out with so much stuff to do with the Civil War and the being Drafted into the army.
I realise this is a very negative review so far and I admitt the movie had its good points, the fight at the beginning was well done and the first hour looked promising but after that it justed dragged and was letdown by its end. I rated this movie a 5/10, This was mainly due to the Directing and the actors doing the best with what they had. I will close by saying that you should NOT go and see this thinking you are going to see a movie like Goodfellas or Casino or any of Martin Scorsese's best work If you do you will come out thinking the same as me.