the first scene was pretty damn good........I'll give them that. I thought, "well....maybe this won't be as bad as "the Beach""......boy was I wrong. If the movie had only lasted 10 minutes, it would have been kick ass.........sadly, that was not the case.
There is an entire block of 1.5 hrs that is pointless to the story........they could have shown the first fight scene.....show maybe 20 minutes of Leonardo with the butcher .......then show the last scene.......the movie would still have made sense and would have kept a good pace.
Why do movie studios keep producing these "epic" length films.......running time of a movie in no way makes it better. It's actually a hinderance............."The Green Mile" lasted 3 hrs.........and kicked ass every minute of it, I would have watched another 3 hrs of it. "Braveheart".......yet another long movie that paid off........"Gladiator", now this movie owns all of these long movies.....I could have watched Gladiator for 5 or 6 hrs............
The reason for having long running times is simple, the time is needed to tell the story. This was not the case of "Gangs of New York".......the story could have been told in an hour.
I dread dying and going to hell...........I know I will be damned to spend enternity watching Titanic and Gangs of New York in an infinite cycle.
After i watched GoNY the first thing i thought was 'Damn i just asted 3hrs of my life watching this piece of s***!, i rented it to see what all the talk was about but frankly i was dissapointed! but about the only thing i did like was the honor Bill the butcher had towards Leos father!
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"A lie, Mr. Mulder, is most convincingly hidden between two truths." Deep Throat.
Actually it was in away historically accurate... You just never hear about it in history class. Thats because it was to violent to learn. Scarry isn't it!
Anyway for the most part it was pretty good. I always like Lionardo D'Caprio and Daniel Day Louis. I wouldn't say it was up with the hype but I enjoyed it!
Well its not that it is violent its the fact it makes America look bad... Thats pretty much why... They teach negative views of American history for years but when it comes to things that are mentioned Gangs of New York... It is barely taught.
Whoa, VP, the reality was WAY worse than that film showed it- it was too afraid of annoying the Irish. The fate of racial minorites of New York at the time- who had to flee to British and French ships in the harbour as mobs of Irish trying to protect their own jobs killed blacks wherever they saw them in the streets- was ignored.
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That's the thing, the film's message seemed to be about intolerance to the Irish but it completely absolved the Irish of the ASTONISHING intolerance they showed themselves- the Irish were against freeing the Slaves because they thought they would lose their jobs- they called it a '****** War', and that night they beat, mutilated and lynched 11 black men (dragging one black corpse by its genitals through town), beat women who had married blacks, and burnt down a black children's orphanage. Black owned shops were destroyed, a girl who tried to aid the wounded badly beaten, and policemen killed- and the core of all this was the Irish immigrants. There was no multi-ethnic mob- certainly not whites and blacks (despite the film's narration flat-out lying to everyone by saying there was), and it was not the work of the Nativists (unpleasant as they were). The rioter's motivations were purely selfish and violent. It was no wonder troops had to be sent in to restore order. And no naval bombardment took place.
But they did not want to show that, did they? Might have sunk the films basic message about Irish immigrants fighting for freedom, or whatever. Not wanting to tar all Irish with the same brush- always a bad idea to apply the mob to the whole- but this film is more than unhistorical, it is a gross distortion of history.
Anyone trying to tell you that this was historically accurate is talking horse manure. The costumes and sets are all painstakingly re-enacted, but the politcal background is ludicrous, and blacks being WITH Leo's mob in the end is so obcene as to be almost painful. If you want accurate, check eyewitness accounts, period records, or books like 'In the Shadow of Slavery' which are not trying to fulfill their own agenda when covering this period. Believe me- serious historians find this film's history laughable, and nowhere is it taught like this.
Incidentally, it has little to do with Asbury's book- to quote the screenwriter: "Doesn't follow the Asbury book at all. We supplied the story. Asbury supplied inspiration and a little history."
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Last edited by Ushgarak on Aug 5th, 2003 at 03:30 AM
Actually they showed a bitt of what happen with African Americans... It was not the focuss of the story though... I mean if they focussed on that it would be a whole diffrent movie.
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Aug 4th, 2003 12:19 PM
