History made relevant, violence made meaningful

Rating: 8/10 (28 December 2002)

"Gangs of New York" is history made relevant and visually appealing. The movie's release was delayed, making it even more timely as a statement on the draft, draft resistance, poverty, immigration, gang warfare, and presidential abuse of executive powers.
Leonardo DiCaprio stars as young Vallon, bent on revenge for his father's death in gang warfare the Five Points. This is one of the poorest areas of New York City where many Irish immigrants are settling. Prejudice against immigrants is the core of the struggles that resulted in the initial battle and remains an open wound. Later, the impact of the Civil War on the lives of these already embattled in class conflicts results in escalated and more impersonal violence.
A passionate affair with a luminous Cameron Diaz takes place, a love triangle with the man who killed the elder Vallon.
The poor protest, Federal soldiers shoot them down, to be repeated during nearly every war since. In "Gangs," the controversy is played out in the context of the Civil War. The poor go to war; the rich avoid conscription for a fee of $300, a fortune at the time. (Now they join the National Guard.) In anti-draft rioting in 1863, as a century later, innocent people are killed, either drafted to fight and die for a country that has abandoned them or, once again, as at Kent State, killed by soldiers (National Guardsmen) on our own streets.
I pity the people who are bored by this movie. Who was it who said, "Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it"? The current US president, who did not fight in Vietnam, is now planning a war that raises the same issues about the draft and executive powers, a war even less pertinent to most of our lives than the Civil War was to the impoverished residents of New York's slums.
This movie reminds us that, though memories of specific events once so impassioned and meaningful eventually fade away, we experience our own versions of them in our own era.
The acting, directing, cinematography, and editing are all superb. Expect major recognition at the Oscars.