Like a fist in the face

Rating: 9/10 (1 January 2003)

Martin Scorcese's movies are full of demented characters that you wish or pray you'll never encountered in real life. Those fearless sociopaths loves to use knives or kill with their own hands. For the first time though they get their right denomination: "butcher". Strange enough, morality is something extremely relative in those films since the characters can kill while reaching sadistic summits and love their mother at the same time. William Cutting reminds me of Tommy DeVito (Goodfellas) in many aspects: they both gangsters of course and you never know when they will decide to slaughter somebody. They bring uncertainty and suspense whenever they appears on the screen making them better villains then those ridiculous horror figures (Jason or Freddy: you name it).
Strong character's type are the mark of all Scorcese films: stories emerge from them. But in Gangs of New York, the social aspect seems to take the first place... for once? (I didn't see The Age of Innocence but I can only guess the approach is similar). Now, characters are mostly driven by archetypes and in some case they are purely and simply caricatures (maybe a strong word in this case) that reacts to the social changes that occurs in New York in the second half of the 19th century. What is remarkable about this film its his incredible cohesion and fairness in his description of real life events. He can show almost all the aspects of this social situation sometime in a single camera shot.
Scorcese focus on New York during the Secession War which is a quite different and original approach then other films with a similar subject (the war). Privation, poverty and racism is generalized while massive immigration brings to America fresh cannon fodder that can fueled the war. In parallel, he shows how immigrants organize themselves into gangs while political order is quite absent or without influence at least until the end of the movie when that order is brutally restored. The thesis deployed by Gangs of New York is quite simple and straightforward: "legitimate" politics and obscure gang powers runs the social and economic destiny of that city. Violence joins with ideals and politicians deals with awful criminals.

It looks a lot like the world I know depicted by newspapers and television but I guess some fictional movies are just more sincere.