Customer Reviews

Gangs of New York (Widescreen) (2 Discs)

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

This film is bloated by at least a half an hour. Leonardo DiCaprio is woefully miscast. Cameron Diaz's character is not only extraneously adrift in this male-orientated film, but also jarringly contemporary. The film's ploting is eye-rollingly obvious; Henry Thomas' character's true motivations are laughably blatant from his introduction onwards, and the 'fever-pitch' resolution and its denoument are soporifically dissapointing, containing an alarmingly high 'Oh, get on with it!' quotient. The film does redeem itself somewhat by its sufficiently grandiose pretensions, although striped pants and bowler hats and a parade of silly period get-ups have never looked particularly menacing. The political allusions are murky as well, drawing rather tenuous parallels with contemporary New York.

Proceed, but watch furtively.

this is a Martin Scorsese epic,and it certainly has that epic feel.i'm
not sure how accurate it is historically,or if things really looked the
way they do in the movie.i still liked the look of it.to me,it seems a
lot of work went into the whole production and it shows.Daniel Day
Lewis is astonishing(nothing new for him).Leonardo DiCaprio was also
good.Cameron Diaz was not bad,but she didn't really impress me all that
much.her character wasn't as substantial as it could have been.like in
many movie,there's a good supporting cast.the movie is brutally
violent,which is probably an accurate depiction of that time.it is over
two and a half hours long,but it doesn't feel like it.i found myself
becoming very quickly and easily involved in the story,a sign of a good
movie.i wouldn't call it a masterpiece,but it is a very good movie.for
me,Gangs of New York is a 4/5

There's too much detail to get into for this movie. The plot is simple enough, but the story is drawn out so meticulously and shown so beautifully, it needs to be seen to be fully appreciated. The acting is amazing. The sets are just incredible. How great is it to see a movie that looks so amazing, yet is not completely done up on CGI!

Scorcese's best work in years - If not ever!

super film
Excellent, Scorsese rend un scénario simple très profond avec beaucoup de réflexion. Je suis fasciné par la ville de l'ancien New-York ! Les décors sont absolument hallucinants, le casting est convaincant... Un très bon film !

Un splendide steelbook, un excellent blu-ray remasteurisé. 200 % satisfait. Bravo à amazon, livré en 48 H

Behind Gangs of New York is a fascinating yet neglected history. There is much artistry to be admired in this film, from its well-researched expansive set design and photography, to detailed minor props and costumes, but mainly it's the accurately vicious and corrupt portrayal of a forgotten era that is the main standout. The blu-ray is gorgeous and well-worth viewing, despite the epic film's possible flaws (i.e. questionable casting, or nonexistent physical changes despite the passage of 16 brutal years). As bonus material, there are a number of featurettes including the discovery channel special, "Uncovering The Real Gangs of New York", which verifies the film's depiction, and references its real life characters. Additionally, there is a commentary by director Martin Scorsese who is himself, a walking film historian and reference guide.

Bill "The Butcher" Cutting: how subtle is that for a name? The only reason I didn't include this Oscar-nominated performance on my list of "The Baddest of the Bad" is because I hadn't thought of it at the time that list was created. Perhaps it was too recent. Or perhaps it is because I have only seen Gangs of New York once and am waiting for it to come out on DVD on July 1 so I can view it a second and third time, the latter of which I will be listening to Martin Scorsese's commentary track during. As far as I know, this is only Scorsese's second commentary, the first being the one for The Last Temptation of Christ. But during that one he shared talk time with screenwriting legend and longtime collaborator-of-his Paul Scrader as well as Willem Dafoe, who played Jesus, and Jay Cocks, who as far as I can tell had nothing to do with the whole sacrilegious shebang, unless of course he co-wrote or at least had a hand in writing the script, which is a distinct possiblity (I can't remember the commentary well enough to say.) Anyway, as much as I liked Chris Cooper's gap-toothed Orchid Thief in Adaptation, which, after all, can be found on my "Ten by the Coppola Clan" list, Daniel Day-Lewis should have won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 2002. He chewed up every scene he was in and spit it right back out in the audience's collective face. He stole the show. I wish he would act more often. All he needs is a nice, juicy role that he can sink his teeth into. Speaking of teeth, another good baddie is Francis Dollarhyde, a.k.a. "The Tooth Fairy," as played by Ralph Fiennes in Red Dragon. And who could forget Hannibal the Cannibal, the number one baddie of all time according to the American Film Institute? But this is neither the time nor the place for serial killers. By the way, the only reason I gave this movie four stars instead of five is because of the love story between Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz, both of whom were arguably miscast. Every time Bill is off-screen the movie suffers a bit; but where it truly lags is the scene in which baby-faced Amsterdam Vallom follows her, the pickpocket, around, and the scene in which they are alone together upstairs. Other recognizable faces include Liam Neeson, John C. Reilly, Henry Thomas, the little boy from E.T. (all grown-up now), and Brendan Gleeson (Braveheart, upcoming: 28 Days Later), whose character is second only to Bill in likability, interest generated, and appeal.

Excellent movie. Great themes. If only people could look past the length and get to the deep roots of the story. Get to the struggle that the people had at the times. I thought that this was a great movie and Daniel Day-Lewis is an amazing actor. He really blew me away...

Perhaps it was inevitable that Gangs Of New York would recieve such a cold shoulder from critics, the Academy, and the viewing public. Every time Martin Scorsese has presented us with one of his greatest, most personal films, he has been shot down, his vision dismissed as hogwash, only to be accepted as a great film years later.

Case in point: Raging Bull was widely panned by many upon its first release, and Scorsese was passed over for Robert Redford's Ordinary People, a good but far inferior film. Raging Bull is now recognized as one of the greatest of all American films. When Scorsese released his most personal film, The Last Temptation Of Christ, it was met with controversy and disdain. Again he was passed over come award time, and now his Jesus bio is seen as one of the greatest films to tackle the subject of Jesus Christ.

I felt that Gnags Of New York was a fantastic film, and upon seeing it, I walked out of the theatre feeling that I had seen a film that would immediately be accepted as one of Scorsese's greatest films. How wrong I was.

Yet I don't understand the cold shoulder in this case, because there is so much to like about Gangs Of New York. We've all said great things about the performance of Daniel Day-Lewis, but his great performance overshadowed Leonardo DiCaprio's, which wasn't all that bad. I personally think we all need to get over Titanic; this kid can act. Cameron Diaz is fine in her role; note the scene in which she and DiCaprio discuss her abortion. She shows that she is just as good a dramatic as she is a comic actress.

The costume design and art direction is impeccable. Scorsese and his crew perfectly captured the New York of the Civil War era. Reviewers have argued that New York couldn't look that bad. As a history student, I can assure you that it did.

Finally, no one has seemed to notice that Scorsese has made a picture that combines the greatest of his influences. Gangs Of New York captures the best of Italian neorealism and grand classic Hollywood spectacle. In combining the two, he has made what may be his greatest film: a melding of De Sica and Fellini, John Huston and D.W. Griffith, into a style that is uniquely Scorseseian. Gangs Of New York rushes along in its two hour, 45 minute running time. Never once did I find it boring or slow moving.

So to those who have said it is a bad picture, I pose this challenge: How would you change it? I've heard lots of criticism but few solutions. Perhaps there are so few solutions because Scorsese has made a picture so perfect that it is impossible for many of us to comprehend its depth.

One of the big controversies surrounding this film was that Martin Scorcese was forced to cut nearly an hour of footage from his final vision in order to get the studio to release it. That's understandable, as not many people will be willing to sit through a 4 hour movie in theatres. So with the release of it on DVD, we should get the complete version, right? Well... it doesn't seem so.

The details on this DVD mention nothing about extra footage. Isn't one of the benefits of the DVD format that we get to see what the director intended before politics and marketing step in? I for one would like to see the COMPLETE movie, the movie that Scorcese wanted to make, rather than the movie which was released, even though that movie was quite good.

I have a feeling that the studio is just doing the usual DVD [trick] of releasing the theatrical version as soon as possible to catch people while they are still hyped on this movie from the theatrical release and post-Oscar boost. After a few months, hopefully they will release a director's cut, causing many people to go back and buy the DVD a second time. I, for one, will wait as long as it takes until the full version comes out. I'm sick of getting [tricked] by these studios into buying one version, and then seeing a "special edition" with all sorts of extras come out a few months later. Not gonna happen this time, buddy-boy.