Gangs of New York (2002)

IN THE DARK/Jonathan Richards

GANGS OF NEW YORK

Directed by Martin Scorsese

Rated R, 168 minutes

Martin Scorsese's "Gangs of New York" takes us to streets far meaner than any he imagined in the gritty urban dramas of his early career. We're back in the mid-19th century New York slum known as the Five Points, as foul and lawless a cesspool of poverty, depravity, and violence as human society can offer. In a contemporary essay Charles Dickens described "narrow ways diverging to the right and left, and reeking every where with dirt and filth." New York's finest - "crushers", they were called then - made token appearances, but the real authority in that labyrinthine ghetto derived from the gangs that held sway and battled for ascendancy.

This story begins in 1846 with a bloody clash between two of those powerful gangs, the Natives and the Dead Rabbits, the latter composed mainly of Irish immigrants, the former of native-born Americans determined to keep the place for themselves. This is not gang-fighting, this is warfare, fought with every kind of blade and cudgel imaginable, and it's turn-your-head-away brutal. In the end, the Dead Rabbits' champion, Priest Vallon (Liam Neeson, in a formidable hello-I-must-be-going cameo) lies dead in the scarlet snow of the Five Points, and his little orphaned son Amsterdam is being packed off to reform school. His vanquisher, Natives leader Bill "Butcher" Cutting (played, with nice casting irony, by Englishman Daniel Day-Lewis), is left in firm control of the district.

Skip ahead in time to 1862. The Civil War is underway, and Amsterdam (Leonardo DiCaprio) is being released and returning home. Sixteen years haven't done much for the old neighborhood. The Butcher is the undisputed boss of the place, collecting tribute and exacting fealty with a brutal hand. Amsterdam, protected by the almost impenetrable disguise of the sixteen years that have transformed him from boy to man, insinuates himself into Butcher's inner circle. His goal is revenge on the man who killed his father, whose death is now celebrated annually by the Natives.

The Hamlet-heavy revenge plot is one of the threads of the narrative. The horror of war is another, and Scorsese furiously indicts the bloodthirsty religiosity that invokes God on every side. There's the political corruption of Boss Tweed's Tammany Hall. And there's a romance, between Amsterdam and a headstrong pickpocket named Jenny (Cameron Diaz), who is the de facto ward and sometime mistress of the Butcher.

But the movie's overarching obsession is the sense of place and time, the social and physical tinderbox that was New York City at the start of the Civil War. And that is its real triumph. Production Designer Dante Ferretti, Scorsese's longtime collaborator, has brilliantly created a Manhattan that erases a century and a half. We are shown through it like the uptown reformers Scorcese introduces in one scene, gaping at the squalor and corruption and casual brutality, and happy to retreat to a safe distance.

Despite its material and atmospheric brilliance, and some Oscar-worthy performances from a great ensemble (particularly the incomparable Day-Lewis), the movie has its flaws. Many of them reside in the script by a heavyweight trio composed of Steve Zaillian, Kenneth Lonergan, and Jay Cocks. With that kind of talent there's a lot of terrific stuff, as you'd expect, but there are some mistakes as well - a fitful narration by Amsterdam, and scenes like one in which Jenny tells Amsterdam she's leaving for San Francisco on the eve of the final gang showdown. "Wait a day," he pleads, "it'll all be over." "It'll never be over," she replies, "and I won't wait around to see you dead." With all the time and money and sweat and heart's blood poured into this project, a little wider berth given to cliché would have paid off. You can practically hear the noonday train bringing Frank Miller.....

More serious is the uncertain playing of the race card. There are no African-Americans in important roles, but somewhere along the way Amsterdam picks up a Black sidekick, who serves no purpose but to emphasize the lack, and perhaps suggest that the Irish were more tolerant and democratic than their rivals. Racism was at the very heart of the tensions that erupted into the 1863 Draft Riots that provide the movie's hellfire climax. Many of the Irish immigrants were virulently racist, and infuriated at being drafted to fight to free the slaves. As the mobs pillaged and burned in response to the Conscription Act which allowed the rich to buy out of the draft and sent the poor to fight, they viciously beat and lynched any unhappy Negroes who fell in their way ("We'll fight for Uncle Sam, but not for Uncle Sambo," editorialized a newspaper of the time.) Scorsese knows this, and shows it, but he has trouble finding the balance.

But its flaws can't begin to derail the irresistible force that is Scorsese's cautionary tribute to the city he loves. Americans have always been quick to sanitize our history and plow under the sins of our past, as we're reminded by the current furor over Sen. Trent Lott's lionizing of Strom Thurmond's racist 1948 bid for the presidency. Scorsese wants us to remember and learn from one of New York's darker moments. He fails to hit us in the heart, but he pounds us in the gut. The history may be a little histrionic, but the movie-making is powerful and unforgettable, and the parallels to the present day are clear. This may bring home the Oscar that has thus far eluded one of America's great directors.

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