Gangs of New York updated...

Rating: 1/10 (21 June 2015)

There was a real opportunity here to make a powerful statement as well as a highly entertaining film but it got completely thrown out by the director & author of the screenplay. Instead of a stinging indictment and/or satire of Americann greed & lust we get an over- the-top presentation of sex & drugs as male pre-pubescent fantasy. Everything the average 13 year-old imagines his future to be. Not surprising given that the director Martin Scorsese gives the majority of his films the same blockbuster treatment: everything short of singing & tap dancing. The only other director using a similar approach is Baz Luhrman. Interesting that Dicaprio starred in this movie & Gatsby in the same year, highly miscast in both. Casting him is understandable: he's likable & cute & popular with the mainstream movie-going public. Here he basically replicates his performance in Catch Me If You Can. I don't say he's a bad actor, just wrong for the part. Here he reminds me of Bob Hope in something like Monsieur Beaucaire: likable but clueless as to what makes the character he's playing tick. Years ago there was a TV series called Profit in which Adrian Pasdar perfectly depicted a similar character. Ah well, gotta go for the biggest-paying demographic, I guess.