Gangs of New York is one of the most provocative films from Hollywood in recent times. It's also one of the most masterly and ambitious. Sprawling over 170 minutes, it's a demanding, challenging epic. Take the opening sequence: Two bands of tribal men marching through Gothic caves and recesses, fighting it out with axes, knives and clubs. It's totally prehistoric but real and, therefore, unsettling. The primitive low life that Scorsese creates cannot be the New York we know. Instead, it's the heart of darkness, the centre of corruption and lawlessness. That, perhaps, is his attempt to reach the barbaric roots of the acme of modern civilisation. And within this story of a city and a nation born in the mean streets, he expertly weaves a personal tale of a son's quest for revenge and his return to honour.
The action unfolds in Five Points, the crime corner of the city in the 1860s. It's here that Priest Vallon (Neeson), who rallied the Irish immigrants, was slain by the Nativist Army of William Cutting alias Billy the Butcher (Lewis) whose only aim in life is to fend off the "foreign invaders". Vallon's son Amsterdam (Caprio) returns to hunt the killer and infiltrates his gang. If Scorsese mythologises the city overtly, he also places it in the context of the violent Civil War Draft riots, the final collision coinciding with this crucial moment in American history.
Scorsese is in perfect control. The primordial sets, the overpowering images and sound coalesce seamlessly. The predominant image is of blood, pools and pools of it. Violence is the basis of Scorsese's oeuvre. Here it gets more relentless, brutal, savage and even carnivalesque. Revenge too is ritualised: "When you kill a king, you don't stab him in the dark. You kill him where the whole court can watch him die." The obvious symbol of the bestial, intolerant nationalism is the Butcher played with an awesome ruthlessness and audacious cruelty by Lewis. The scene where he watches his "foster son" Amsterdam in bed with his friend Jenny (Diaz) makes for a most compelling cinematic moment. In the end as the primeval NY dissolves into panoramic shots of the present-day skyscrapers, the sentimentality and pacifism do get too overt and abrupt. More so as you hear U2's The Hands That Built America. But that takes away little from a film made with an unbridled passion for the medium.
US Top 5
1. Underworld
2. Secondhand Lions
3. The Fighting Temptations
4. Once Upon a Time in Mexico5. Cold Creek Manor
INDIAN Top 5
1. Boom
2. Koi Mil Gaya
3. Parwana
4. Market
5. Kuch Na Kaho
Courtesy: Film Information
