Mad, bad and deadly dull to watch

Rating: 1/10 (6 March 2003)

At a loose end in Vienna earlier this week (2 March 2003), my friend and I went into the English Cinema on Mariahilferstrasse to watch "Gangs of New York". I fear deeply not merely for the aesthetic judgement of the cinema-going public, but for its mental and moral health in receiving this dire, overlong, gratuitously violent farrago with anything less than utter derision.
The "plot" (I use the term not merely loosely but with something that would verge, unenclosed with the requisite scare quotes, as intellectual fraudulence) has been described elsewhere on IMDb, so I shall not attempt, even if such an attempt were either possible or worthwhile, to corral the disjointed episodes of Scorsese's free fantasia into a semblance of order. Scorsese's name itself has become a kind of Open Sesame into the acceptance of people who ought otherwise to know better. I was never a fan; even "Taxi Driver" seemed to me a kind of early essay in the pornography of violence that has now become the stock-in-trade of most Hollywood directors. At least "Taxi Driver" was technically accomplished: well-filmed, well-acted, well-edited. Beyond the moderately impressive set designs and the pyrotechnics that appeal to four-year-olds of all ages, "Gangs of New York" is not even an averagely well-made movie. As for the acting, Di Caprio runs the full gamut of his repertoire from A to B, while Day Lewis is a Victorian melodrama villain who, were he not terrorising hapless street urchins with his cutlery collection and unconvincing New York accent, would be better occupied tying young ladies to railway tracks in the path of approaching steam locomotives. (Anyone casting a live-action movie of "Wacky Races" need look no further for Dick Dastardly!)
There is no editing, no discipline, no sense of internal form or tempo; there is "just one damn thing after another". These damn things are violence, violence, gratuitous sex and more violence. There is no serious attempt to build character, nor any sociopolitical analysis of the immiseration of the various tribes of the Five Points beyond the sentimental exoneration of anyone who is not white, Anglo-Saxon, male, heterosexual and Protestant, and the vilification and calumniation of anyone who is. Straight WASP male - Boo!
At the height of the draft riots I was reminded briefly of a far better movie: bloated WASP (boo!) David Hemmings's attempts to maintain a stiff upper-lip as his grand residence was besieged was a sillier re-run of the scene in "Carry On Up The Khyber", where the Raj feign indifference during "tiffin" to the invading natives.
A rotten movie that glorifies anarchy and senseless violence. Avoid, avoid, avoid! I only give it 1 out of 10 because IMDb do not give me the option to give it 0.