Very well filmed and directed, Martin Scorsese does what he does best yet again. The filming in this movie was phenomenal. Filters, special effects, and camera angles just to name a few were done extremely well. The film has the effect that it truly was filmed in actual 1863 New York city (with modern cameras of course). I don't know much about 150 years ago but language, dress and decor seemed to fit.
The two main characters were Leonardo DiCaprio's Amsterdam Vallon and Daniel Day Lewis' Bill Cutting. Daniels character Bill was loosely based on William Poole, a person who lived from 1821 - 1855. First error is right there, hence the loosely based upon. William Poole was actually a member of the anti-Irish gang in New York, but I could find no mention of "leader" of any gang or group of gangs for that matter. DiCaprio and Lewis are joined by Cameron Diaz and John C. Reily. After seeing John humiliate himself in so many stupid comedy films, I was very impressed and glad to see him in this much better acted movie. On a timeline however, he did this film before all of the more recent stupid comedy films, leaving me to wonder why the switch?
I was very impressed with the fight scenes in the film. Opening on a fight scene was amazing. Fresh white snow covered park is bathed in blood after the natives and the Irish gangs fight for control of town where they lived dubbed 5 point. Fights throughout the film had realism, and bruises and cuts on people were accurately portrayed. I was a bit confused at the end why ships started firing cannon balls into 5 point when first of all the main fighting was not even located there, and second we as viewers had no warning of this and it seemed to be very out of place.
The language used in the film was very entertaining. Now days we condense everything in this film to derogatory terms such as slut, bitch, thief, criminal, traitor and things of that sort. In the film they touch on it very slightly but they have a different term for every type of criminal, and unique and clever terms for most things in their lives. The one that caught me the most off guard was when one of the guys was going to pick up a prostitute and Daniel's character laughingly said she had been frenchified. This meant she had an STD. On a side note, it must have sucked (or just been normal I guess) to be a woman in that area in that time period, it seemed as if most of the women were prostitutes on some level.
I also enjoyed at the start of the credits that they did a 30 or so year jump a few times to show the evolution of the New York skyline. What is it going to look like in another 150 years when we are all gone and our grand and great grandkids look back at when we lived?
Enjoyability is where I doc a few points. Nothing was technically wrong with the film, but it just didn't hold 100% of my interest. Clocking in at damn near 3 hours, I was not upset with the length either. Great filming and directing paired with good acting and script give us a well rounded and slightly educational 4 star film. This was a tough rating for me, bouncing between 3 and 4 stars. Everything good about the film makes me bump it up because I can't base on enjoyability by itself, I'm sure many of you would rate a 5 star film, and some of you may rate it a 2 star film. To each his own on this one, but hopefully you can use this as a guide.
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