Despite owning Gangs Of New York for at least a decade, I have a strong suspicion that I haven't actually rewatched it since first seeing it on VHS back when it was first released. I believe my opinion was one shared by many other people then. Daniel Day-Lewis was brilliant as the main villain (well, sort of the main villain, I'll expand on that soon enough), Leonardo DiCaprio was good, but not great, and Cameron Diaz was the weakest of the stars onscreen. The film was typical Scorsese, forming another chapter in his ongoing series about violent people creating things that then become bigger than them. Goodfellas is about a man making himself into a mobster, and a monster. Casino is about the mob building Las Vegas. Gangs Of New York is all about the thuggery and violence that was used to shape, I'll give you two guesses, yep, New York.
DiCaprio plays Amsterdam Vallon, a man we see returning to the bosom of New York many years after watching his father be killed in a huge street battle. The man who killed him is Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting (Day-Lewis), a figure who basically runs the city. Amsterdam has to bide his time before avenging his father, which allows him to get closer and closer to Bill, but he also gets closer to a young woman named Jenny Everdeane (Diaz). It might take a village to raise a child, but it takes some rough time on the streets to make a man. Or something like that.
It's easy to see why director Martin Scorsese would have been drawn to this story/script, written by Jay Cocks, Steve Zaillian, and Kenneth Lonergan. It shows a bloody chapter in history that did just as much to help some people as it did to destroy many others. What is more surprising, especially when rewatching the film today, is just how it stealthily leads you towards an overview of a whole system that is imbalanced and riddled with injustice. People like Bill are able to hold on to their positions because they help those who are in official positions of power. Respectability is a mask, and often worn by those who can quickly call on others to do their dirty work for them, and for a ridiculously low price. And no matter where you think you are in the pecking order, your position is only there as long as those with much more money and power allow it.
Day-Lewis steals the movie, and rightly so. His character is a perfect blend of great writing matched by a flawless performance, and he's always a believable threat to those around him. While DiCaprio isn't as assured or memorable, he does enough to make his part work, and he just about manages to hold his own when sharing the screen with such a formidable co-star. Diaz isn't terrible, but she struggles to convince anyone that she was one of the best picks for the role, although she's not helped by a script that is much more confident with the many main male roles than it is with the lone woman. Elsewhere, the cast is stacked with great actors giving their best attempts at the accents (mainly Irish American). Brendan Gleeson and Gary Lewis are highlights, but you also get to enjoy John C. Reilly, Stephen Graham, Jim Broadbent, and Henry Thomas in some plum roles.
Where this succeeds is in the way it cuts into the corpses that helped to build a city, and also helped to build America, and then starts to show how even the strongest figures were so often puppeteered by those with limited patience for them. Where is falls down slightly is in the way it feels exactly like a film from the early 2000s. This comes through in the casting, it comes through in a score and soundtrack that is not up there with the best work of either composer Howard Shore or Scorsese himself (who often has a great ear for the best tunes to use), and it is there in a couple of moments that I would argue remain some of the most disappointing work from the usually flawless editor Thelma Schoonmaker. I am not a complete moron though, and there are still plenty of moments here where she shows off her consummate skill, but one or two big battle scenes are marred by editing choices - changes in the speed of the action, a lot of cross-dissolving and overlaid imagery - that feel very much from this time.
Despite these minor criticisms, and they are based on very conscious choices by the director, Gangs Of New York easily holds up as another absolute cracker from a director who has rarely put a foot wrong throughout a long and impressive career. And, despite very stiff competition, it’s quite possibly the best performance that Day-Lewis has ever given.
8/10
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