Gangs of New York

There is a Shakespearean quality to Gangs of New York – a rich, violent tale of a mid-19th century city tearing itself apart during the Civil War. With overtones of Hamlet, the movie follows Amsterdam, a young Irish immigrant (DiCaprio) seeking revenge for the murder of his father, 16 years earlier. Passing unrecognized in his old neighborhood he works his way into the trust of Bill the Butcher (Day-Lewis), his father's killer. The vengeance, so carefully nurtured, must play out against the back-drop of the 1863 draft riots, the worst in our nation's history.

New York was a city seething in conflicting views, a tone set by Bill in his racist rantings. Anti-Irish, anti-black, anti-Asian with his own vision of what America should be, Bill is a brutal crime boss. His rise to power is marked by ancient rituals of combat; his killing of Priest Vallon (Liam Neeson) in 1846 secures his right to rule. As despicable as Bill is, he is not a two-dimensional villain. Day-Lewis gives him depth and a warped morality.

Jay Cocks' story is based on factual accounts of gangs in the Five Points slum, weaving fictional characters amongst historic ones, Amsterdam's revenge with the events of July 1863, a gang war, a race war, a class war, all boiling over in the summer heat. Set against the vast period canopy, it is the little touches that bring the story to life – the use of Gaelic, the music (Amazing Grace properly performed as a Sacred Harp hymn), the idioms and the slang are crafted to keep the viewer locked into the story.

Only a couple of minor quibbles – and not to give away too much: Abdominal wounds tended to be fatal in the 19th century because there was no way to treat the resulting infectious peritonitis. And while drugs were readily available in the slums they were not cheap. A doctor who could provide anesthesia would not do so for charity. The scene at the very end of the film is beautiful, but there is no cemetery with that view of the bridge, and short of a potter's field (one unlikely to have carved headstones), it is unlikely that Catholics and Protestants would be buried together.

So, a fine movie overall, but not for the squeamish. Grand in scale, it has a body count to match. For those who purchase the DVD, there is an added feature – a special from Discovery Channel on the historical research behind the film.

Slainté

Review by Karen Ackermann

The movie, The Gangs of New York, is, first and foremost, a story of revenge. Director Martin Scorsese attempts to force the story into a particular place and time by setting it in 1860s New York City. He makes repeated references to the unwelcome immigrants (and the nativist response) and the 1863 Civil War draft riots. The end result is an unsatisfying mix of personal revenge and public history.

The movie opens with preparations for a gang fight between those who consider themselves native Americans (and thus worthy to live in the United States), and the immigrant Irish, whom the nativists believe should return to Ireland. Amsterdam (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a boy who sees his father, Priest (Liam Neeson), killed by nativist Bill the Butcher (Daniel Day-Lewis). Carted off to reform school until he is released as a young adult, Amsterdam infiltrates Bill's gang in order to exact his revenge. In the process, viewers are given snippets of information about gang slang, criminal activities, nativism, racism, and the Civil War, in both voice over and visual action.

Why does this mix of fictional revenge and factual history not work? A story of revenge can be depicted in any time and place. Background information about the specific time and place need not be force-fed to the audience as Scorsese does with his tangential forays into the historical past with the use of intrusive voice overs. The tensions between nativists and immigrants are not fully explored. Here the focus is on Bill's nativist hatred for immigrants and Boss Tweed's desire to recruit immigrants to serve as voters in his political machine, Tammany Hall. Bill is a character for viewers to hate and his innate hatred for the Irish immigrants helps viewers dislike him even more but this is a personal hatred. Unfortunately, viewers get little sense that nativism was a serious issue among some Americans who felt threatened by the waves of Great Famine immigrants into the United States; these immigrants took jobs away from "natives" because they worked for less pay, desperate to feed themselves and their families in their new home. Tweed appears repeatedly, riding the winds of change to best effect his desires to stuff the ballot boxes to his and his cronies' advantage, and his presence almost becomes an irritant. This movie is about revenge, isn't it, not political intrigue.

Lastly, we have the draft riots of 1863. Over all, African Americans play a miniscule part in this movie and they are verbally and/or physically abused whenever they appear, regardless of how well-dressed they are. With the depiction of the draft riots, however, blacks figure more prominently and viewers are exposed to the brutal violence done to African Americans during the rioting. It is little more than gratuitous violence, however, because Scorsese has not developed a relationship between the audience and the African Americans so that viewers can care about what is happening to them on screen. In reality, the riots are simply a device to get Bill and Amsterdam together; to do battle, they must overcome the melee and find room for their personal confrontation. Viewers care more about the successful meeting of Bill and Amsterdam (they have been working towards this moment for nearly the entire movie) than they do about the riots.

Intrusive factual overlays and incomplete exploration of historical issues are not the only problems with this film. The love triangle clouds the story line with the woman being an enigmatic figure. Is she really telling the truth about her relationship with Bill? Can someone who is a hardened criminal such as herself, focused on making her way in the world, do anything other than simply use the men who are in her life? At the end of the movie, when she returns to Amsterdam, does she do so because she has lost everything and cannot board the ship to San Francisco after all, or does she really love Amsterdam? Bill's death scene is equally enigmatic. He tells Amsterdam of the gang fight that opens the movie and speaks well of himself and of Priest regarding that battle; he is one hero honoring another. But what he tells is not exactly what the audience (and Amsterdam) saw. Does this mean Bill has deluded himself all this time? Does this mean Amsterdam has been wrong to nurse the need for revenge all his life because it had actually been a fair fight?

Scorsese has tried to do too much, blending too many ideas and failing to fully explore any of them, except for Amsterdam's dogged determination to avenge his father's death. How could this film have been done differently to better effect? The same storyline but without the insistence of providing intrusive historical information would have made a better film. Bill was vile enough without the audience needing to be bludgeoned with his hatred for immigrants. Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall could have been omitted or made more peripheral. The draft riots, while important to history as were political machines, were not important to Amsterdam and his need for revenge so they, too, could have been omitted. What would be left? A story of revenge set among the gangs of 1860s New York City in which location, costuming, speech patterns, living and working conditions, loyalty, and death all loom large and seamlessly draw the audience into a moment of America's past.

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