Gangs
of New York, the year’s most eagerly anticipated film (aside from the
one following this review), plays like a who’s who of AWOL Hollywood heavyweights.
Director Martin Scorsese hasn’t been seen in theaters since Kundun in 1997 (I like to pretend Bringing Out the Dead never happened).
Ditto for stars Daniel Day-Lewis (1997’s The
Boxer) and Leonardo DiCaprio (Titanic,
in 1997 — I often pretend The Beach never happened either), who always seem to be Academy Award contenders, despite
appearing about as frequently as Halley’s Comet.

            Speaking of Titanic, I don’t think Gangs is going to achieve the same level of success, either financially or Oscarly, though
I do think the two films lend themselves to comparison, from their painstaking
attention to detail to their dexterous ability to combine action and romance
(the latter being the Achilles’ heels for both, however). Oh, and they’re very
similar in terms of how much I liked them, which is a whole lot.

            Gangs,
which started filming way back in the spring of 2000, opens in an area of 1846
Manhattan’s Lower East side called Five Points. The first scene depicts a
father shaving and teaching his young son about knives and St. Michael before
the duo lead dozens of people through what appears to be the bowels of the
Earth, to a tune you won’t easily forget, until they emerge into the daylight
and the center of town. They’re a scary-looking bunch with scary-looking
weapons, but no more frightening than their counterparts, who materialize from
the other side of the town square and take up their defensive positions. A few
words are exchanged, and then the two sides go at it Braveheart-style until the snow is good and pink.

            The father is Priest Vallon (Liam
Neeson), the leader of the Irish immigrant gang Dead Rabbits, and during combat
he suffers a fatal wound from the rival gang leader. The Natives, a group of
longtime Americans led by William Cutting (Day-Lewis), win the battle and take
control of Five Points. Vallon’s son, who witnessed the gutting of his father,
is shipped off to an orphanage, but returns 16 years later (as DiCaprio) with
revenge on his mind, especially when he learns that the glass-eyed Cutting (a.k.a.
Bill the Butcher) celebrates the anniversary of Priest Vallon’s death with a
big party. Now calling himself Amsterdam, DiCaprio’s narration (one of the
film’s weaker points) explains the whole
keep-your-friends-close-but-keep-your-enemies-closer notion as he eventually
becomes Cutting’s right-hand man.

            Meanwhile, there has to be some
romance so the teenage girls pony up their cash. And, of course, the woman in
question (Cameron Diaz) has to be involved with both men in some way, so there
can be even more conflict between the two of them. As in Titanic — more so here, actually — the lovey-dovey stuff
threatens to bring Gangs to a
screeching halt, but Scorsese never gets quite as carried away as James Cameron
did (and comparing the DiCaprio-Winslet chemistry to the DiCaprio-Diaz
chemistry isn’t at all fair).

            Meanwhile, chemistry and conflict
all take a backseat to the film’s depiction of New York itself. Scorsese
doesn’t Lucas it up and create his surroundings digitally — everything you
see was built by hand, right down to the real cobblestone streets. Gangs, inspired by Herbert Asbury’s 1928
non-fiction book of the same name, has the history down cold as it neatly folds
subplots involving the Irish potato famine, the Civil War, and the Draft Riots
into its deceptively complex story.

            There’s only one question when it
comes to Gangs‘ acting: Which Oscar
is Daniel Day-Lewis going to win — Best Actor or Best Supporting Actor? Once
the studio decides which category they’re going to push him in, AMPAS may as
well just mail him the trophy. Day-Lewis gets completely lost in his role in a
way I’m not sure I’ve ever seen before. Watching him act his ass off is
simultaneously thrilling and depressing as hell, since it may be years before
we see him on screen again. He’s good enough to make everyone else in the film
look like Madonna. Here’s to hoping he makes another film again in the
immediate future, and to hoping Scorsese’s original cut (three-plus hours) will
be on the DVD.

            Together with a crack team of
behind-the-scenes talent, Scorsese has managed to construct a bustling city
built on all manner of illegal activity, which is spearheaded by Cutting and
his Tammany Hall crony William “Boss” Tweed (Jim Broadbent). Do
yourself a favor and hunt down Ric Burns’ amazing New York: A Documentary Film to brush up on your history — it’ll
make Gangs that much more enjoyable.
Plus, you might need it: This is the first major film to portray Civil War-era
New York, so those of us younger than 160 probably don’t know much about it.

            In some ways, The Two Towers is better
than The Fellowship of the Ring. And
in some ways, it’s a little bit worse. The point is, it’s not the exact same
movie we saw in theaters last year — like, say, the first two Harry Potter films. For that reason
alone, Towers deserves kudos. But, of
course, there are plenty of other reasons to heap massive amounts of praise
upon it.

            Towers picks up right where Ring left off
(and with absolutely no recap, so don’t bother going if you haven’t seen the
first flick, or at least read the book), with the Fellowship splintered into
three groups headed in different directions. Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean
Astin) continue on their way to destroy the all-powerful ring, while Aragorn
(Viggo Mortensen), Legolas (Orlando Bloom), and Gimli (John Rhys-Davies) try to
track down the frightening Uruk-hai warriors who have kidnapped Merry (Dominic
Monaghan) and Pippin (Billy Boyd).

            The character we all thought died in
Ring — Gandalf (Ian McKellen) —
kicks off Towers, as
screenwriter-director Peter Jackson shows the wizard battling that crazy fire
monster as they fall into a bottomless abyss. It’s wicked cool, but we all know
Gandalf survived, because he’s in Towers‘
trailer (which is, like, not wicked cool at all). Anyway, the three separate
factions of the Fellowship proceed on their merry way, encountering new
characters and new (but still dire) situations involving more close calls, more
bad injuries, and more characters returning from the dead.

            The main problem I had with Towers (other than the evil not being
nearly as menacing this time around — Christopher Lee’s Saruman and that
flaming vagina thing remain tucked inside the two titular towers and, mostly,
out of both sight and mind) is, well, downright confusion. I ain’t the smartest
guy in the world, but I’m no dummy, either. I haven’t read the books, and I
found it very difficult to keep track of where everyone was, not to mention
where they were headed. In Ring, the
Fellowship went from Point A to Point B as a group; that’s easy. But they’re
all over the place this time. I know there’s an atlas of Middle-Earth in the
books — maybe they should hand out maps on the way into the theater, or put
one of those translucent diagrams in the corner of the screen, like a
videogame. Of course, it doesn’t help that the locations all have nutty names,
like Rohan, Mordor, and Gondor (and don’t get me started on the characters:
We’ve got Saruman and Sauron, Éowyn and Éomer, Arwen and Morwen, Boromir and
Faramir).

            I should also mention I liked Ring a lot better the second and third
times I saw it, and I anticipate my experience with Towers will probably be the same. Of course, anyone’s potential
confusion will likely be forgotten when it comes time for the Battle of Helm’s
Deep, which might be the most amazing, large-scale undertaking I’ve ever seen
on the screen. Those Uruk-hai chaps are frightening enough when there are just
a handful of them, but 10,000-plus taking to the Deep in one hell of a battle
scene left my mouth agape and my palms sweaty. As impressive and memorable as
it was, however, the clash still takes a backseat to the emergence of Gollum
(Andy Serkis) as a major character in the film. The CG critter, who blows away
that Dobby thing from Harry Potter,
gets more screen time and ends up becoming the most complex character in Towers.

            There’s still more — way more than
I can even get into here — happening in Towers.
All of the things you dug from the first film are back and, generally, bigger
and better. There’s more of an emphasis on the whole nature-versus-industry
thing, and — yes — there are walking, talking trees. From what I
understand, Towers strays from the
book more often than Ring did
(especially the premature ending), so hardcore fans might have something to
gripe about. But in the grand scheme, Towers should be making them (and everyone else) squeal instead of sulk.

Interested
in unsanitized movie ramblings from Jon? Visit his site, Planet Sick-Boy, at
www.sick-boy.com, or listen to him on WBER’s Friday Morning Show.

This article appears in Dec 18-24, 2002.