Watched late on Sunday night and now suffering the dire consequences. No that's not just fatigue, it's sheer unmitigated WEARINESS at having sat through three interminable hours of Scorsese's Gangs of Noo Yoik. Blimey, what a lot of tall hats! What a lot of blood! What a lot of wildly vacillating accents!!
Daniel Day Lewis did a somewhat suspect impersonation of Robert De Niro throughout, so why didn't Marty just call up his old pal instead? Did he have a lightweight comedy to make? Or was he just no good at twirling a silent movie villain moustache? I kept expecting Lewis' 'Bill The Butcher' to tie Diaz to some railway tracks.
And Leo's brogue? Sheesh...Da boy may be talented, but not at this kinda stuff. Not quite as bad as Far and Away, but close...
Yes, again it looked mighty fine. But plot? Boy loses dad, boy vows to avenge dad, boy meets street trollope with heart of gold, boy kills enemy...err...that's it. Where was the richly seamed exploration of the birth of a nation and the underlying politics in setting a great city in motion? Oh there it is, briefly alluded to in the last twenty seconds. Duh...
I wanted history, I got beautifully choreographed costume violence with a trip hop soundtrack. Ugh...bring me the head of Howard Shore.
(ps: it was written by someone called Jay Cocks. Another lame ex-rolling stone hack. That about sums it up)
2 comments:
yes, i saw that too. or at least part of it. really woeful. but there again, aren't most scorcese films? (cape fear still upsets me)...
Cape fear has to be his worst imho. made worse by the enormous hype it received at the time. De Niro was just plain unpleasant, and I think Nolte was on autopilot (from a bottle hehe). as you know, I'm a fan of The Aviator, but that's more for the acting than direction. Then again...he ocassionally makes stuff like Goodfellas or Casino. Ooh Marty, you bounder etc. etc
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