gang,s of new york

Martin Scorcese’s latest film, GANGS OF NEW YORK, is a raw and sprawling epic that teaches memorable lessons about the early development of the United States. Aside from the striking history, however, the filmmakers stretch the thin plot until it sags and almost snaps.

Mr. Scorcese offers us a richness of images and ideas in this work; his methods and results, like the subject matter of immigration and struggle, are about plurality. GANGS demonstrates the director’s mastery of camera work, scene movement, and symbolism. Opening in lower Manhattan in 1846, the narrative shows us the gang war preparations of the Dead Rabbits, a slew of hardened Irish immigrants and their offspring. Led by Priest Vallon (Irishman Liam Neeson playing an Irishman!), the Rabbits and other “foreign” factions run up against a confederation of gangs calling themselves “native Americans.” This motley consortium is led by one Bill Cutting, the “Butcher” (Daniel Day-Lewis). Toward the end of a thrilling battle scene that leaves blood and bodies across a large section of Five Points, Cutting dispatches Vallon as Vallon’s son watches.

Cut to 16 years later, when the boy, who calls himself Amsterdam, leaves the Hellsgate orphanage. It’s not hard to predict that his consuming mission will be to kill the man who killed his father. (Neither is it hard to recall other plots that feature an exiled character returning for revenge!)
A fault of the film lies in the prolonged extension of this premise: two and a half hours later we are still waiting for an end to the boy’s vendetta against the Butcher. I should add, however, that Scorcese twice avoids clichéd conclusions to this conflict. And this fresh approach ensures the impact of the story.

Stories like GANGS need good villains, and Daniel Day-Lewis portrays the most impressive bad guy in recent memory. His Bill Cutting is so many things: gang leader and crime boss, actual butcher and political bedfellow of Boss Tweed (Jim Broadbent), patriotic bigot and overt murderer. Wielding his cleavers, tapping the misshapen pupil of his glass eye with a knife tip, feverishly sharpening his blades on the long steel, Cutting falls just short of cartoonish in his characterization. Yet every year he commemorates the battle in which he defeated Vallon and forever banned even the mention of the Dead Rabbits. Most curiously, he seems obsessive about honoring Vallon’s memory; of course this preoccupation emphasizes Amsterdam’s shame at not assassinating the Butcher upon first sighting him. Clearly Day-Lewis is one of the finest actors working, and the hatred spewed by the Butcher prods along this plot and keeps matters interesting.

Leonardo DiCaprio also proves himself very capable in the role of Priest Vallon’s heir. DiCaprio’s acting is steady throughout the piece, and his character’s patience helps hold the narrative together when historical asides break in later.

Similar to DiCaprio’s performance, Cameron Diaz’s role as Jennie is solid but not brilliant. The part seems to have been written both as love interest for Amsterdam – at first reluctant but later devoted – and catalyst for jealousy. Diaz plays a canny pickpocket and mysterious follower of Bill Cutting, and engages our interest as the events of the time rip apart the lives around her.

If the American Civil War served as the birth pangs that delivered the full body and soul of our nation, then the Draft Riots of 1863 in New York City were surely some of the most difficult complications of the gestation. In a wonderful condensed scene, we witness Irish immigrants come off the boat, sign themselves into both citizenship and the Union army, and then, changed into the blue uniforms, climb aboard another ship bound southward for battle. The clincher is the ship’s crane unloading coffins from the same deck that is now filling with replacement soldiers. The message is clear that it was unfair to conscript those who did not have $300 to buy out of service. Later Scorcese sketches a moving map of the actual streets in which the protestors rioted, looted and lynched. Further, a stroke of genius appears in the way the director incorporates the government’s response to the riots into the final confrontation between gangs.

I found the computer generation to be both amazing and mildly disturbing. When are we watching real objects, and when are we fooled by fakery? I do appreciate the long virtual vistas of what the city may have looked like 140 years in the past. But a few of the shots appear plastic, and I still have not seen wholly convincing fire created by digitalization. What is plainly impressive is the actual set, built in Italy, resembling several blocks of the decaying barns, buildings, churches and even caves of early New York.

The film is every bit deserving of its R rating, for language (and some of the slang fascinating!), nudity, and especially violence. GANGS OF NEW YORK had been in the mind of its director since the late 1970’s, and now fully realized, stands as a graphic and gutsy historical study of politics and human spirit. Admirable for its brutal honesty, if a bit over-the-top at times, the film is a must-see for fans of Martin Scorcese as well as of American history.