Director Martin Scorsese will always be cursed by the accomplishments of his past work. He’s one of the best directors ever and he’s created a body of work others can only envy. Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and Goodfellas are all classic Scorsese films, and, unfortunately for him, people will compare every new film he makes to those, in one way or another. Gangs of New York takes place in the mid 1800s -- a time when gangs ruled the streets. The police, seemingly incapable of controlling the ruling groups, were considered to be just another band of thugs and someone else to fight. The area of Manhattan on which Scorsese focuses is called Five Points. The film opens up with a young boy named Amsterdam Vallon (played as an adult by Leonardo DiCaprio) witnessing his father, Priest Vallon (Liam Neeson), being killed in a street brawl by a neighborhood tyrant called Bill the Butcher (Daniel Day-Lewis). Priest Vallon leads the Dead Rabbits, a group of Irish-born American immigrants. Bill the Butcher leads the Nativists, people who are American born and resentful of the immigrants arriving by the day. Following his father’s death, Amsterdam is sent off to an orphanage. Flash-forward 16 years and young Vallon is now a grown man and has returned to Five Points to learn that Bill the Butcher is still king of the streets.

Martin Scorsese does an astonishing job of recreating a part of American history I suspect few know, or even had any idea existed. It’s an ultra-violent, gritty, and sometimes disturbing look into an era of apparent lawlessness and individual quests for power. The movie sets are elaborate, the characters are complex, and the story is sprawling -- all ingredients for an epic film that Scorsese should be more than capable of pulling off.

For the most part Gangs of New York is a success. This is a spare-no-expense Hollywood extravaganza that effectively recreates another time and launches us straight into it. You believe you are there. And across the board, the acting is very good. In particular, Day-Lewis dominates the screen as Bill the Butcher. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him get an Oscar for this role.

On the other hand, Gangs of New York falls somewhat short of the mark -- it just doesn’t have the vibrancy or the magic that it should, which keeps it a fair distance from being a really great film. If I had to guess I would say that perhaps Scorsese wasn’t as comfortable with the material here as he was with his modern-day dramas like Taxi Driver and Goodfellas. He seemed to have a feel for that material that is lacking here. In the end, Gangs of New York is an admirable effort that gets a ***1/2 rating.

• Go Back