Felt like a TV miniseries.

Rating: Null/10 (26 March 2004)

Perhaps unfairly I was kind of indifferent to seeing GONY mainly due to the surprising cast choices that was headlining, and it seems my fears had merit. Sure Liam's the man, tall and stricking and so obviously suited to being an Irish leader in a strange land, but (Spoiler herein) he's in it for all of ten minutes. Yup. That leaves us with the marvellous Day-Lewis who again is perfectly placed to his role, but this movie is about scores of characters - gangs - and not just one man. Unfathomably, DiCaprio is exactly the same character as his Titanic counterpart - I swear he's even wearing the same costume. Sure he throws us a little irish twang but other than that it's Jack Dawson through and through. I'm surprised he didn't teach Diaz to spit. Speaking of Mz Diaz - urgh, how does she get work? It's certainly not by expanding her character roles. If Daniel Day-Lewis' acting range goes from A to Z then Cameron Diaz's goes from A to A. And A's not that great in the first place. So yes, I wasn't thrilled with the cast.
But what of the story, the direction, the sets? Well story-wise it's all by the numbers; no surprises and no major twists, turns or great moments that enable the viewer to feel the road is leading somewhere. It's a long drawn out straight-line which left me zero ability to share any sort of affinity with the characters or their lives. They seem to be 'playing' at life and despite the ultra gore in places I still felt everything was nice and safe. With a few cuts for content it could be edited to three neat little one hour specials and shown on network TV. Fisher-price filmaking.
The set (after all there really is only one major set) is stunning albeit a little clean, but hey - send me a postcard of it and I'll save three hours of my life.
For a movie entrenched in the dark era of 19th century New York I expected something grittier, wittier and not so prettier.