My Gosh, we could play a little game of
'Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon' with the DVD reviews we've been posting this early July week on PSXNATION. Here we go: Martin Scorsese's "Gangs of New York" is co-produced by legendary Italian producer Alberto Grimaldi (1), who also produced Sergio Leone's 1984 crime epic "Once Upon A Time In America" (2). "Gangs" features as its leading man Leonardo DiCaprio, who also starred in James Cameron's "Titanic" (3). Cameron has as good a working relationship with Arnold Schwarzenegger (star of the "Terminator" movies) as Scorsese has with Robert DeNiro, as the two demonstrate in their underrated 1982 so-called comedy "The King of Comedy" (4). Anywho, Schwarzenegger once worked with action/sci-fi director Paul Verhoeven ("Starship Troopers," "Robocop") in 1990's "Total Recall" (5). And Verhoeven once worked with Kevin Bacon (the reason we're doing this whole 'connect-the-dot' thing in the first place) in the unsuccessful 2000 special effects flick "Hollow Man" (6). Got all that? Guess what? Neither did we, thank you. Now back to our regularly scheduled review.
Like Leone's aforementioned "Once Upon A Time In America," "Gangs of New York" is a project near and dear to Martin Scorsese's heart that had been in the making for several decades. Once greenlit by Miramax (whose arthouse fare status with flicks like "Chocolat" and "Chicago" seemed at odds with "Gangs'" blockbuster-like status) the movie was surrounded by a swirl of hype, rumor and speculation throughout its entire production. With 12 producers (including showbiz bigshots like Michael Ovitz and Harvey & Bob Weinstein working alongside "Once Upon A Time In America" veteran Alberto Grimaldi), a $100+ million budget, AAA star power ("Titanic" star Leonardo DiCaprio and "Charlie's Angels" beauty Cameron Diaz), a 167 min. running time and the return of Daniel Day-Lewis to acting duty after a self-imposed exile (similar to fellow American actor Jason Patrick's before his triumphant return the same year with Jay Carnahan's "Traffic") "Gangs" was fodder for criticism from the moment it opened nationwide on Christmas of 2002. Though it did rack-up some business (enough to become Scorsese's highest-grossing movie ever) "Gangs" couldn't compete with holiday competition like Peter Jackson's second chapter in New Line Cinema's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy or even Leo DiCaprio himself in Steven Spielberg's "Catch Me If You Can" (which outgrossed "Gangs" by a 2 to 1 margin).
Why am I mentioning all this useless-but-somewhat-interesting trivia instead of reviewing the movie? Two reasons. First: the self-congratulatory special features in this DVD paint a much rosier picture about the movie (Over 135 Top Critics Agree... 'One of the year's best pictures!') that the very mixed reaction it received from average moviegoers that were split between their admiration and their disdain for "Gangs." And second: my Mom told me that is impolite to tell the truth when it might offend the feelings of oth... Wait a sec! That hasn't stopped me before when I wanted to slam real hard a movie that I didn't much care for, right? Right, then screw second and let me just come out and say it: "Gangs of New York" is a mess, an incongruent mess of silly melodrama and wannabe epic symbolism anchored by three very good actors not at the top of their game in this vanity project from one of America's most talented filmmakers. Phew, feels good to scream when you have something you want to get off your chest.
I didn't feel the 229 minutes that "Once Upon A Time In America" lasted the three times I've seen it over the past two-and-a-half month. But I felt every minute of "Gangs" slowly drag on as Scorsese desperately tried to keep the audience distracted for the lengthy period of time that passes between the couple of epic street brawls that punctuate the beginning and ending of the movie. From the moment we watch William Cutting, a.k.a. Bill The Butcher (Daniel Day-Lewis, overacting to the point of ridicule), stab to death a priest named Vallon (Liam Neeson in a cameo-like role) in front of his young son Amsterdam we know that the young man will grow into manhood and seek revenge for his father's death (AS SEEN ON "CONAN THE BARBARIAN" AND A MILLION AND ONE MOVIES BEFORE OR SINCE). When a grown-up Amsterdam Vallon (DiCaprio, who phones his performance on automatic pilot) arrives in New York he not only starts to oil the machinations for revenge against the now all-powerful domain of Bill the Butcher's gang over the Five Points turf every other gang craves. He organized a revolution, one that catches into its out-of-control swirl the affections of woman that both Amsterdam and Bill crave (Cameron Diaz's Jenny Everdeane) as well as corrupt political figures of the era like William 'Boss' Tweed (a deliciously hammy Jim Broadbent).
John C. Reilly (who also starred in Miramax's "Chicago," which came out at about the same time as "Gangs"), Cara Seymour (amusing as Hell-Cat Maggie) and Henry Thomas (the kid from "E.T. The Extraterrestrial") have a few colorful moments in supporting roles. And the real stars of the movie are the untold millions of dollars that went into the design of the period sets, costumes, cinematography (by Michael Ballhaus) and subtle special effects. It really looks/feels like the movie is taking place during a 19th century period of urban lawlessness far worse than any of Dickens written nightmares. Too bad that none of the three leads is interesting or compelling enough (together, as individuals or as the symbolic triangle of emotions and stereotypes they're meant to represent) to make their scenes outside of the street brawl battles (which are up there in "Braveheart" territory in its depiction of man-on-man carnage) the least bit interesting. Scenes between DiCaprio and Diaz that should resonate with repressed emotion or sensuality feel flat and lifeless, and Day-Lewis makes his villain such a cartoon character that he rivals Alan Rickman's Sheriff of Nottingham (from Kevin Costner's 1991 epic "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves") as hammiest villain to ever chew scenery in a motion picture.
For a film ambitious enough to mix historical facts about the Civil War (which movies rarely cover from the Eastern urban perspective), the Tweed corruption scandal and the immigration of the Irish to America when the potato famine swept their homeland (each a topic worthy of its very own movie) with an ordinary three-way love triangle "Gangs of New York" feels rather ordinary and perfunctory. Not what one expects from the director of "Goodfellas" or "Raging Bull."
The Disc:
Unlike most 2 Disc DVD sets that attempt to squeeze the entire movie on the first disc and all the special features in a second disc Miramax splits "Gangs of New York" in two even halves (85 min. on Disc 1 & 82 min. on Disc 2) and spreads the supplements across both discs. A Feature Commentary With Martin Scorsese is the only supplement shared by both discs and is everything you'd expect from a man with as overriding a passion for cinema as Mr. Scorsese: learned, informed, specific and often very entertaining. One can only hope that his voice will accompany future re-releases of his more famous (and far better than "Gangs" IMHO) cinematic work on DVD like "Goodfellas" or "Mean Streets," but I digress. The availability of disc space allows both halves of "Gangs" to look and sound terrific courtesy of a clean and pristine Widescreen Anamorphic (2:35:1) Video Transfer and impressive English Dolby Digital 5.1 & DTS 5.1 Surround Soundtracks.
From the noisy bars to the bloody street warfare and from Howard Shore's epic score to the slang terms freely thrown about when characters exchange pleasantries (!), the film packs as good an audio/visual wallop as any other big-budget Hollywood release from recent years making the DVD rounds. A French Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround Audio Track and English Subtitles (Closed Captioning) are also included and readily available. Disc 1 houses most of the special features, which include somewhat interesting featurettes on the History of Five Points (13:34 min.), Set Design (9:06 min. with Production Designer Dante Ferretti) and Costume Design (8:11 min. with Costume Designer Sandy Powell) that try to go beyond the usual behind-the-scenes montages. There's also a Multi-Angle Feature, 'Exploring the Sets,' that allows for 360 panoramic views of certain sets based on the point of the photoplay in which a logo appears on-screen. The Five Points Study Guide are 17 pages of written text (with a font that will make anyone with a TV set smaller than 32 inches squint real bad) sub-divided between 'Luc Sante Introduction' (12 pages) and 'Five Points Vocabulary' (5 pages). Did I mention the picture and sound quality for "Gangs" are second to none?
Still on Disc 1 you'll find Theatrical Trailers for the movie (including a Teaser trailer) and a Sneak Peeks section with trailers for Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" (which looks every bit as bad as I've been hearing about for months now), "Frida," "Chicago," "Confessions of a Dangerous Man," "The Quiet American" and "A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese (tsk, tsk)." Disc 2 only has two special features: a 4:41 min. long U2 Music Video, 'The Hands That Built America' and a 35:10 min. Discovery Channel Special, 'Uncovering the Real Gangs of New York'. The latter recycles quite a bit of information from Disc 1's 'History of Five Points' featurette, but its distance from Scorsese allows the show to have a more didactic approach toward the exposition of the characters that the movie portrays in broader strokes of stereotype. The section about the real-life William 'Boss' Tweed (played by Jim Broadbent in the movie) was particularly interesting, though the documentary doesn't pull as many punches as it should in pointing out the movie's legion of historical inaccuracies. Can you spell 'synergy with ABC News (a division owned by the same company that own Miramax, the Walt Disney Co.) in the name of supporting the parent company's pet project' boys and girls?
bottom line:
This is an overblown, ponderous, ultra-melodramatic and sometimes out-of-control ego trip by a great movie director that is too much in love with his creation (many decades in the making) to notice that it doesn't have a heart, soul or real emotion on which the audience can rest its collective emotion. "Gangs of New York" will be better remembered by what it could have been (a return to form for Scorsese after a decade lost in the ruins of cinematic self-discovery) than for what it is (a misfire of epic proportions) or for anything on the screen (save for a couple of bloody street brawls). There are enough nuggets of entertainment and special features spread thinly over two discs, however, to sneak the film into a three star rating. But just barely!
By - J.M. Vargas
