December 20, 2002 | One of the precious few movies of 2002 with a legitimate claim to greatness, Martin Scorsese’s long-awaited, much-anticipated Gangs of New York is a blood-and-thunder American epic, audacious in its ambition and awesome in its achievement.
The project reportedly is a dream come true for its prodigiously talented creator. If we can take him at his word, and I don’t see why we can’t, Scorsese has dreamed of directing this vast and teeming drama for nearly 30 years, ever since he read Herbert Asbury’s near-legendary historical account (first published in 1925) of the same title.
Knowing that, it’s tempting, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, to reinterpret many of Scorsese’s earlier violent and vivid tales of Manhattan – Taxi Driver, Mean Streets, even Bringing Out the Dead – as warm-up exercises for this magnum opus. Just as important, it’s much, much easier to understand why Scorsese felt compelled to tackle Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, transforming the novel into a sedate yet seething period drama that – until now, at least – seemed to be the most anomalous item on his resume. (Yes, even more so than Last Temptation of Christ.) Innocence in a sense served as the director’s entryway to the New York of more than a century ago. Once there, Scorsese must have found it easier to descend from the upper-crust society of the 1870s to the criminal-class savagery of the 1860s.
Gangs of New York actually begins in 1846. And for the first few minutes, you might suspect Scorsese has time-warped even further backwards, to a period somewhere closer to the early Middle Ages. Within the confines of torch-lit underground caverns, a tribal warrior speaks gravely to his worshipful young son, then rallies his confederates – armed variously with clubs, axes and knives of all sizes – to steel themselves for battle. Propelled by pride and bloodlust, the warriors kick through a heavy door, then spill out of the semi-darkness. And suddenly, almost miraculously, we in the audience are almost blinded by the bright whiteness of a snow-blanketed thoroughfare, our first glimpse of a cityscape that hints of 19th-century civilization.
It’s a brilliant beginning, easily the most viscerally exciting opening sequence in any movie of recent vintage. (Like the rest of the lavishly mounted Gangs, it was filmed on massive sets at Italy’s Cinecitta studio.) Better still, it greatly enhances the impression that we are witnessing the prologue to some primordial tribal warfare. Which is altogether apt, because what quickly follows is a spectacularly violent street battle that suggests a frenzied confrontation between better-armed and slightly more upright man-apes from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001.
The masterfully choreographed and superbly edited savagery is wrenching – at once horrifying and exhilarating, unspeakable and mesmerizing – and it serves as fair warning from Scorsese: “If you can’t take this, you had better leave. Now. Because there is more of this in store for you.”
Here and elsewhere in Gangs of New York, Scorsese does not exploit violence. Rather, he does something much more disturbing: He presents it truthfully, raw and unromanticized. By the time we get to the movie’s harrowing Armageddon during the 1863 Draft Riots, the movie is steeped in blood, and yet all the more stunning for its power to enthrall.
Amid the filthy streets, disreputable barrooms and overcrowded tenements of the Five Points, the most dangerous region in Lower Manhattan (and, quite possibly, all of the United States) during the mid 19th-century, the battle lines are drawn. On one side, we have gangs comprised mostly of Irish Catholic immigrants – groups with such colorful names as Plug Uglies and the Dead Rabbits. On the other, we have equally vicious bands of second- and third-generation Nativists who don’t want to share “their” country with ever-increasing hordes of “foreign invaders.”
Corrupt politicians – including the notorious Boss Tweed, a real-life rascal robustly played by Jim Broadbent – hope to manipulate the blood-feuding combatants, relying on the votes of newly enfranchised immigrants to maintain control of the city’s coffers. But Bill “The Butcher” Cutting (Daniel Day-Lewis), the most powerful of the Nativist gang chieftains, cares little about the fine art of political gamesmanship. He simply wants to control the Five Points, which he sees as his right as “a true American.” To sustain his power – and, yes, to slake his thirst for blood – he continually wages war against the Irish gangs, and claims the life of charismatic Dead Rabbit leader Priest Vallon (Liam Neeson) in the opening melee.
After the battle, Gang leaps ahead to the 1860s, as young Amsterdam Vallon (Leonardo DiCaprio), Priest Vallon’s grown son, returns incognito to Five Points to avenge his father. You can sense a touch of Hamlet, along with hints of many other classic revenge stories, as Scorsese, working from a screenplay credited to Jay Cocks, Steven Zaillian and Kenneth Lonergan, follows a circuitous path toward payoff.
Amsterdam slowly, insidiously worms his way into Bill’s good graces, and even saves the life of the hearty villain on one occasion. Over time, Bill reveals a crude intelligence and perverse nobility. He peppers his blunt-spoken bluster with presumably self-taught eloquence — “It’s fair! A touch indelicate, but it’s fair!” – and, without knowing Amsterdam’s true identity, he tells the younger man of his admiration for “the finest man I ever killed,” Priest Vallon. All of which leads Amsterdam, not unlike the moody prince of Denmark, to hesitate. But not indefinitely.
DiCaprio gives a solid and affecting performance as Amsterdam, but his character remains too grimly earthbound for the celebrated Titanic star to ever overshadow Day-Lewis’ cunningly flamboyant portrayal of the grandiloquent Bill the Butcher. Coming off as a cross between a young Robert De Niro and a deadly-serious Big Boy Caprice (the malapropism-prone gangster played by Al Pacino in Dick Tracy), Day-Lewis commands every scene in which he appears, and haunts most scenes in which he doesn’t. Better still, he looks absolutely natural, and unquestionably ferocious, while wearing the kinds of silken high hats that could have made a lesser actor resemble a Dr. Seuss character.
The supporting players – including Cameron Diaz as Jenny Everdean, a comely and crafty pickpocket, and Brendan Gleeson as Monk McGinn, a Dead Rabbit loyalist – are well cast and compelling. You might complain, of course, that a few characters – the corrupt cop played by John C. Reilly, the traitorous Dead Rabbit played by Henry Thomas – appear to have been diminished in the editing room. And you might quibble about a few scenes that feel like they were similarly truncated. In the end, though, none of this really matters.
After experiencing Gangs of New York, I am reminded of what a theater critic once wrote of Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh – “Criticizing such a monumental work is as pointless as criticizing the ocean.” Scorsese’s masterwork is a force of nature that seeks to overwhelm you. Go ahead: Take the plunge.
