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Gangs of New York
(Reviewed January 24, 2002, by James Dawson)
-
Don't believe the "emperor's new clothes" hype. If Martin Scorcese's name were not attached to this overlong, embarrassing disappointment, reviewers would be placing a silhouette of a turkey next to their reviews instead of singing its praises. (The fact that Rolling Stone's Peter Travers and "Ebert & Roeper's" Richard Roeper named "Gangs of New York" as their pick for the best movie of 2002 says far more about their woefully nonexistent critical faculties than all of my bitter invective ever could.)
From the very first piece of dialog in the film ("No, son. The blood stays on the blade."), you will know that you are in for a pretentiously arty and stupid slog. Liam Neeson mouths those words after cutting his cheek with a straight razor and handing said "blade" to his son, who starts to wipe it clean on his pants leg. I'm still boggled by the moronic, meaningless symbolism Scorcese was reaching for with that line, which simply makes no literal sense. As my dear brother pointed out when warning me away from this movie, the son should have looked up with a sneer and replied, "Yeah, okay, dad. I'll leave your blood on here to get all hard, crusty and scabby. Should make for a great shave next time."
The movie is chock full of other painfully unsubtle scenes. Bill the Butcher, played with scenery-devouring gusto by Daniel Day Lewis, spouts a jaw-droppingly corny soliloquy while literally draped in the American flag. A fight in a church ends with two combatants knocking down a wall (!) to reveal a huge crucifix, with J.C. himself looking down on the proceedings. Leonardo DiCaprio, during another slugfest, knocks a framed picture of his unavenged father from a mantle when his head is rammed into a wall, so he can see his old man's face looking up at him from the floor. If this isn't the kind of thing that a first-year film student would lose points for on a freshman project, it sure as hell should be.
Voice-over narration almost always is the mark of hackwork, an artless shortcut used by directors who cannot be troubled to tell a story in cinematic terms. "Gangs of New York" is a perfect example, and even goes one worse than usual by adding another voice to DiCaprio's occasional narration. Toward the end of the film, during the Civil War draft riots, we see telegraph operators tap-tap-tapping out news about what's happening all over town...while a disembodied radio-style "play-by-play announcer" tells us what is going on! Trust me, it's even goofier than it sounds.
There is so, so much to dislike in this film. The fight scenes are nonsensical. (For one thing: If the leader of an enemy gang just struck down your own gang's leader, and was taking quite a very long time finishing the guy off, and you and your comrades had knives, cleavers, cudgels, etc. at hand...would you just stand around watching it happen? Methinks not!) We are treated to a few bare breasts during a "sittin'-around-drinkin'" scene, but God forbid that costar Cameron Diaz should whip out her celebrity ta-tas in either of her two "gettin' it on" scenes with Leo. (This is especially preposterous in the first, where Leo is so hot for her that he actually removes her corset and has his hands all over her body...but doesn't scoop out Cameron's lovelies from her stretchy scoop-neck blouse??? Wha..???) During his flag-draped monolog, Bill the Butcher mentions being so ashamed of looking away from an enemy during a fight that he later plucks out one of his own eyes and sends it to the victor. Oh, sure. That's gonna happen.
You never for one second will be drawn into the completely cornball storyline enough to forget that you are watching a bunch of actors hamming it up. Every line of dialog is one that either ends in exclamation points or is supposed to have deep portent and gravity. After almost three hours of this slop, the movie ends up being nearly as preposterously campy as "Far From Heaven."
Enjoyable moments are few and far between, but there are enough of them to keep this one from getting an "F." Bill's knife-throwing act with Cameron Diaz has all of the tension and menace that is missing from the rest of the film. I laughed out loud at one scene that I'm sure was not intended to be funny (wherein a character gets a quite unexpected cleaver in his back; okay, you had to be there...). And, just on general principles, I automatically enjoy watching scenes of angry mobs striking back at the condescending rich, and revolting against the tyrannical, utterly corrupt government.
In fact, by the time "Gangs of New York" ended, I wondered if Scorcese even realized that his entire "hands that built America" premise is one that in reality is sadly ironic, not uplifting. The hands that built America, after all, ended up not being those of people out fighting in the streets for the right to be left alone, for the right not to be dragooned into fighting wars with which they disagreed, and for the right to be free from taxes that fund criminally corrupt politicians' priorities. The hands that built today's America are the ones that have done their best to strangle freedom and pick the pockets of the powerless.
Vote Libertarian, folks. VOTE LIBERTARIAN.
Back Row Grade: D
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