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Ambitious
scope, tangled plot
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Gangs
of New York opens in a magnificent tribal atmosphere.
Irish immigrants gather in tunnels, sharpening axes,
maces and knives, looking every bit as though they were
going to war in the 13th century rather than the 19th.
Led by Priest Vallon (Liam Neeson), the immigrant army
assembles in a squalid crossroads, a nasty bunch dotting
the stark white snow on the ground. Arrayed against
them is a horde of native-born Americans lead by Bill
the Butcher, a resounding villain played by Daniel Day-Lewis.
What
ensues from that meeting is one of the most brutally
violent street fights put on celluloid. Forget The
Two Towers, the opening gang war has more carnage
than twenty minutes of Helm's Deep. To detail the depth
of ritualistic savagery portrayed in this battle scene
would be a bit much. These gangs play for keeps and
take no prisoners. Of the many casualties littering
the snowy field after the battle is the young son of
Priest Vallon, who is allowed to live but vows vengeance
on Bill the Butcher.
It's
difficult to say this but Gangs of New York
could have used more formula than the ambitious scope
that director Martin Scorsese has been allowed. With
that kind of set up any lesser director would have fashioned
a linear (but hopefully driving) narrative
leading to the expected resolution. Scorsese has tried
to create something more, a wider social history of
New York at the time of the Civil War. While he has
succeeded in weaving this world before our eyes, along
the way he loses the threads necessary for engaging
the audience with motivation, with emotion and conclusion.
The
sides in Gangs of New York are neither all
good nor all bad. This is what Scorsese lays out for
us by the end of the movie. Although Bill the Butcher
has destroyed his enemy, Priest Vallon, he honours his
dead opponent's memory every year, calling him the only
man he's killed worth remembering. By comparison, DiCaprio's
Amsterdam character - the young boy grown up to exact
his vengeance - is flat, with less dimension that Ray
Liotta's ganster ingenue in Scorsese's classic Goodfellas.
An
Oscar for that mustache
The
comparison is worth exploring. Both Liotta and DiCaprio's
young characters serve as tourists into the underbellies
of society. Both characters become more or less willing
servitors in criminal families, learning for us the
rules of conduct, what could get you stabbed in the
back, what could get you the riches of the kingdom.
Liotta's Henry Hill leaps into his world with self-serving
intentions, DiCaprio's Amsterdam has the motivation
of the Count of Monte Cristo.
Where
Henry Hill becomes a more interesting character is when
his path diverges from his crime family. Hill is ensconced
in his goombah regime and becomes introspective when
he is given the opportunity to turn his back on it.
Scorsese and Gangs writer Jay Cocks never seem
to give Amsterdam the internal dialogue necessary to
either make DiCaprio's character as grey as he should
be, or strengthen his motivation to gain vengeance on
Bill the Butcher.
Less
attention still is spent on Cameron Diaz' pretty thief
Jennie, a woman caught between her loyalty to the brutal
Bill and new lover Amsterdam. Diaz is game and can turn
in a believable character (see her in Being John
Malkovich for instance) but is stretched when her
character has to show more emotion than a saucy look.
Her character is no different than many other women
characters in manly films, left to pick up the pieces
after the final battle.
The
field then, is left all to Daniel Day-Lewis' monster
of a character, Bill the Butcher, a role he seizes with
great gusto. In Bill, Lewis injects the entire furious
and macabre character of Gangs of New York.
Full of physical menace, growling snarled but poetic
dialogue, Bill, in both his opening appearance as the
medieval warrior and later as the wainscotted, top hat-wearing
William Cutting, challenges everyone in the scenes shared
to stand up to him. No one does. This is just one of
those films so thoroughly dominated by one delicious
performance that makes all other performances transparent
in comparison. Like Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast,
Day-Lewis will gain a lot of attention come awards time.
Unlike
Bill, the rest of the film doesn't have as much energy.
Once the setting and characters of New York in the 1860s
is laid out, the film begins to meander. Scorsese ambitiously
tries to draw together every quarter of social and political
conflict, bit of cultural past that seems to have entranced
him, as if desperate to portray that slice of history
for the screen knowing that it won't be attempted again.
While admirable, it results in considerable bloat. How
much the resulting tangle is a result of the much publicized
feud between Scorsese and his Miramax producer Harvey
Weinstein is unknown, but the product is a
tangle.
Nowhere
is this more apparent than in the film's conclusion
where Scorsese tries to sum up the Draft Riots, racial
and class divisions, and also the inevitable clash between
Bill and Amsterdam at the same time, jumping between
each event. Over this all, the cliched use of a newspaper
montage and an annoying telegraph operator's commentary
seems a half-hearted way to make it all coherent. This
would have been less of a challenge if Scorsese had
allowed the audience to use more of their imagination
in absorbing the elements of social history while concentrating
on the central story.
In
theatres now.
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