John Jakes On Acid

Rating: 2/10 (17 December 2005)

"Gangs Of New York" feels as much of a labor to watch as it was to make, and considering the fact we are being paid considerably less for our part than director Martin Scorsese was for his, that's a problem.
There's the potential for something good here, a fictional take on life in the hard streets of Manhattan during the Civil War, but the film never delivers. Instead, it serves up bloody chunks of exposition and characters with lines that are meant to sound profound but come off clumsy. "The blood stays on the blade," a young boy's father explains in the opening moments, after he cuts himself shaving and the boy starts to wipe the razor clean. Why? Is he so sentimental about shaving cuts? Does he not know a bloody razor will rust much faster and become useless, even dangerous, for shaving over time?
When the boy grows into a man, he becomes Leonardo DiCaprio, who seems to have undergone a physical metamorphosis from the sallow-cheeked lad of "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" to bloated rodent-man of Arch Hall Jr. proportions. I never understood the mania for DiCaprio, either pro or con. He's a serviceable actor who gets a lot of big parts though the consensus seems to agree he was better when younger. Here, his post-pubescent woodenness is evident as his Amsterdam Vallon character is forced to double as clunky narrator ("New York loved William Tweed... and hated him, but for those of us trying to be thieves, we couldn't help but admire him.") and put through his paces too quickly for air.
What air there is is sucked up by Daniel Day-Lewis's overripe performance as Bill Cutting, the greasy-haired nativist butcher with the Snidely Whiplash 'stache. Day-Lewis definitely gives off a lot of energy, but he's also all over the place, the most out-of-control performer in a Scorsese film including Richard Manuel in "The Last Waltz." One minute he's denouncing the Irish with a zealous scorn, the next he's taking young Amsterdam into his embrace. For a guy who hates the Irish so much, Bill sure spends a lot of time with them.
Cameron Diaz fights with DiCaprio in delivering the least convincing Irish accent, really lost at sea though I blame Scorsese and the screenwriters more than her. Too many other minor characters are used too obviously as plot devices, explaining how things are as a way of moving a bloated story along. The film bites off way more than it can or should chew, wanting to show not only the nasty environs of Five Points but the machinations of Tammany Hall and assorted figures of the day. Boss Tweed is wedged into the storyline very roughly, as is Horace Greeley and P.T. Barnum.
I was reminded in the end of John Jakes and the historical fiction he was popular for when I was growing up. Young man arriving in a strange American city, meeting famous people from history books while making friends and enemies of uncommon intensity. Simpler fare for a simpler time, yes, but there was something entertaining in the way it was done. Here, one gets a lot of blood and violence, some sex, sketchy attempts at humor, much emoting, and absolutely zero fun.