Not a bad movie, but not that great either

Rating: 4/10 (27 February 2007)

Typical Scorsese effort: average crime movie script dressed up with great acting and pretentious, way overly stylish camera-work.
I'm amazed this movie holds anyone's attention, let alone earns the "best movie ever!" praise you hear about this one. As I said, I didn't think it was bad, it was just wasn't that good. I had to force myself to keep watching, trying once again to see what other people see in Scorsese. I get the feeling all the praise and accolades heaped on him are just a big prank being played on me.
At least the Godfather was an actual good movie, although certainly no masterpiece.
A far, far better movie than this that came out around the same time would be Miller's Crossing. It's actually entertaining--you don't feel like killing yourself after watching it for just a few minutes, which is another thing about Scorsese I don't like. His slickness, bleak subject matter, unredeeming violence all combine to create an effect like a low-frequency earthquake hum or day-old shellfish--it's nauseating and depressing. I honestly spend the rest of the day depressed and joyless after watching a Scorsese film. You may say that's the power of the film maker, but I say that's simply the power of the subject matter. Manos: the Hands of Fate is pretty depressing for much the same reason.
Art shouldn't always be uplifting (I love Bicycle Thief and the Year of Living Dangerously) but if it's going to put such misery on the screen then it should have a good reason for doing it and it should teach me something.
A good example of how hollow the praise for Scorsese and his works rings is the famous Copacabana scene, a two or three minute steadicam shot following two characters from the outside of a nightclub as they wind through the kitchens and so forth and end up at their table. Scorsese's fans call this "the best shot ever." As I said, it's a long shot of a fellow getting a table. Kubrick did great tracking shots too, but the key to a great tracking shot, like any shot, is that it communicates something significant to us, puts us in the state of mind of the characters, etc. But this was just some people walking to their table. The difference is contextual and often subtle, but it's there.