Who Cares?

Rating: 4/10 (10 January 2004)

This excellently mounted and meticulously directed epic stumbles by breaking the first rule of movie story-telling: make the viewer care about the characters. You don't care about these people any further than being truly relieved that they are all certainly dead by now. DiCaprio is grossly miscast, as is Diaz. Lewis tries very hard, and almost succeeds, at turning in a credible performance; but each time he becomes interesting, Scorcese cuts away to some inconsequential crap development back at some filthy dung pile that these folks see fit to fight over.
Priest's son? Bears examination, eh? My over-riding thought as I watched this picture was, "My God! What must these people have smelled like?" I guess Scorcese did succeed in this amount of realism.