Gangs of New York

"Some of it I half-remember," says the hero of Gangs of New York. "The rest I took from dreams."

This fleeting line of voiceover narration is more than a storyteller's disclaimer; it's an explanation of Scorsese's methods. From Mean Streets through Goodfellas and beyond, Scorsese has often fused grotty realism and macho opera, journalism and myth. Despite its rancorous production history, mile-deep narrative gaps and obvious signs of pre-release tampering (including a series of "Remember this guy?" flashbacks that re-introduce us to characters we met 10 minutes ago), it's a triumph-a vibrantly nasty populist epic that summarizes everything Scorsese is about. It plays as if Goodfellas and The Age of Innocence had a baby-an infant swathed in ruffled silk, gnawing on a femur.

We first meet the film's hero, Amsterdam Vallon, during the film's prologue, which establishes two rival gangs in New York's decrepit Five Points neighborhood, the Irish immigrant Dead Rabbits and the U.S.-born Nativists. As a boy, Amsterdam witnesses a public showdown between the Dead Rabbits and the Nativists that climaxes in the murder of the Dead Rabbits' leader, who might be the ultimate Scorsese twofer: a gangster priest. (He's played, of course, by Liam Neeson.) Daddy gets whacked by the Nativist leader, a one-eyed, blade-wielding thug celebrity named Bill Cutting, aka Bill the Butcher (a demonically forceful Daniel Day-Lewis). Young Amsterdam flees, spends 16 years in a House of Refuge (read: reformatory), comes home to Five Points looking eerily like Leonardo DiCaprio (effective in a blank-slate role) and integrates himself into the larger and now politically potent Nativist gang, which Bill rules through brute force and wicked charisma, then wavers between a need for vengeance and a deep fascination with Bill that mutates into daddy-worship.

Thus the plot of Gangs careens into motion, along with its political themes: race and class warfare, the interplay of violence and politics. The climax is a dizzyingly huge recreation of the Draft Riots of 1863, in which New York's poor rebelled against Civil War conscription and sparked the worst devastation this city had seen prior to Sept. 11, 2001.

It's a man's world. There's only one major female character in Gangs, Cameron Diaz's pickpocket Jenny Everdeane, and while Diaz's performance has fire, and Scorsese respects her toughness, she's still The Girl. (There are hints of a love triangle between Amsterdam, Jenny and Amsterdam's best friend, Henry Thomas' sensitive hooligan Johnny, but like many Gangs subplots, the bulk of it appears to have been cut.) Scorsese is more interested in what evil men do to each other, and to themselves. He treats every powerful male character as a variation of a crime boss, and every organized group as the equivalent of a gang. Their ranks include the competing private fire departments, who squabble over turf rights as buildings burn behind them; the brutal, easily corrupted police, represented by Happy Jack (John C. Reilly), a former street thug who now wears blue; the powerful Schermerhorn family (headed by David Hemmings), which stands in for all the rich folk who pit the poor against the poor to divert attention from their own greed; Boss William Tweed (Jim Broadbent); and numerous straight-up street gangs with names like the Plug Uglies, the Dead End Kids, the Shirt Tails and the Daybreak Boys.

Amsterdam doesn't just follow Bill to undermine and destroy him; he's a primitive visionary who connects his own persecution to that of his countrymen, a teeming horde of uneducated peasant dreamers. ("Talk about locusts!" crows a newspaper story. "Irish, more Irish!") Amsterdam studies Bill's tactics with an eye toward one day replacing him.

Like most Scorsese films, Gangs comes in at the end of an old way and the beginning of a new way; within decades of the story's end, New York will be a unified city. But Scorsese is too smart to fall for the sentimental John Ford myth of civilization swallowing the frontier; Gangs' true subject is how the frontier continues to exist within civilization. Cunningly played by Day-Lewis, Bill is the incarnation of America's id-a monster we try to deny but invariably feed. He's cruder than the rich folk he connives with-after Amsterdam bests one of his men in a grueling fistfight, Bill hands the kid a slab of raw meat to lay against his face-but he's no more odious. (Bill must die by the end of the movie, but the audience knows macho intimidation and ethnic hatred won't die with him.)

Gangs' most surprising quality is its sense of fun, which, in Scorsese fashion, often backfires on the audience like an exploding cigar. (Leaving the screening, I heard a fellow critic announce with amazement, "That was the most violent movie I've ever seen.") Like most Scorsese pictures, it's a Boy Movie, but not in the Brian De Palma sense (masturbatory fantasy disguised as dreamy satire). Like good Sam Peckinpah Westerns, it understands why men need to confront and kill each other even as it insists we acknowledge the collateral damage (orphaned children, cities on fire) that aggression inflicts. Amsterdam is that cliche of cliches, the fatherless seeker, but he soon learns he's not alone; there are at least two other Gangs characters whose daddies got killed in the street. One need only read the papers to know this cycle is timeless.

Scorsese has been rapped in recent years for becoming a bit of a schoolmaster, immersing himself so deeply in research that he films his notes and forgets about connecting with an audience. It is impossible to say why Gangs of New York, which Scorsese has wanted to direct since the 70s and was originally intended as a nearly four-hour movie, does not fall prey to this weakness. I'd imagine the film's reckless energy originated in fights between Scorsese and Miramax boss Harvey Weinstein, who has a reputation for recutting directors' films, spent millions of the company's money on Gangs and would rather it be seen by hordes than admired by a handful. But we'll probably never know, and in the end, it doesn't matter. The result is at once familiar and new, an Eastern Western stocked with cowboy-movie characters-the fatherless warrior-drifter, the conniving gang boss, the corrupt mayor and so forth.

The script was inspired by Herbert Asbury's 1928 book; credited screenwriters include Jay Cocks, Steven Zaillian and Kenneth Lonergan, and Scorsese almost certainly did some rewriting (he always does). The baroque dialogue, infused with period-accurate slang and comic-book hyperbole, suggests a squalid urban cousin of turn-of-the-century Western novels. (Bill the Butcher, facing down the Dead Rabbits and the immigrant gangs they're allied with, snarls, "May the Christian Lord guide my hand against your Roman popery!") Anybody who's seen a Sergio Leone movie will see every plot twist coming from a mile away; but as always, Scorsese is less interested in events than in exploring why they happened (or had to happen).

The ritualized quality of the revenge plot (it's so old cavemen were probably tired of hearing it) makes the film's politics slip right past the inattentive viewer. As such, Gangs could become Scorsese's most popular movie since Goodfellas-and as far as I'm concerned, that's a good thing. Since the 70s, uncompromisingly personal big-budget movies have grown rarer and rarer. This deeply cynical movie demands we acknowledge the manipulation of the poor by the rich and the self-interest that lies behind most supposedly noble political actions. It is exactly what we needed.