Gangs of New York

Locations
Call Number: DVD Drama Gangs
On Shelf At: Downtown Library, Malletts Creek Branch, Westgate Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 1st Floor 1-week checkout	DVD Drama Gangs	1-week checkout	On Shelf
Malletts Adult A/V 1-week checkout	DVD Drama Gangs	1-week checkout	On Shelf
Westgate Adult A/V 1-week checkout	DVD Drama Gangs	1-week checkout	On Shelf

Originally released as a motion picture in 2002.
Special features: U2 "The hands that built America" music video; history of the Five Points; exploring the sets of "Gangs of New York" (multi-angle); feature commentary with Martin Scorsese; set design; costume design.
Leonardo Dicaprio, Daniel Day Lewis, Cameron Diaz, Jim Broadbent, John C. Reilly, Henry Thomas, Brendan Gleeson, Liam Neeson.
In 1846, waves of Irish immigrants poured into the New York neighborhood of Five Points. "Billy the Butcher" bands his fellow "Native Americans" into a gang to take on the Irish gang "The Dead Rabbits," organized by Priest Vallon. After an bloody clash Vallon is dead and his son ends up in a brutal reform school. In 1862, that boy returns to seek vengeance against the man that killed his father.
DVD, Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound, DTS 5.1 digital surround sound, Region 1 encoding, widescreen.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

Author Notes

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

good submitted by kbahleda on July 23, 2018, 9:33am Very intense if not kinda of corny movie

awful submitted by slugwhisperer on August 4, 2019, 10:53am Big name cast. Great costumes and sets. Bad plot.

gangs of new york submitted by avrogers1 on August 12, 2019, 11:54am lots of wow factors, ill give it that! probably not something I would watch again!

Technically Good But a Tough Watch submitted by Meginator on August 21, 2022, 6:32pm Content Warning: As you’d expect from a Scorsese production, this film has a lot of violence and a lot of blood; anti-Black violence; and an encounter that can plausibly be read as involving sexual coercion (although the narrative seems to contradict this, it still made me quite uncomfortable).

In its technical aspects, this is undoubtedly a great film, but in the end the story doesn’t live up to the production value or the high quality of the acting. Martin Scorsese aims for a sweeping historical epic, but his interweaving of Tammany Hall’s political machine and the New York Draft riots into the main storyline never quite gels and instead distracts and detracts from what is otherwise intended to be a more intimate character-driven narrative. Moreover, the depiction of the rioters seems to sympathize with their inherent racism, which made me incredibly uncomfortable; it’s not necessary to the story and it certainly isn’t handled with any subtlety or nuance, so why include it at all other than to be unnecessarily (and offensively) provocative? The film’s climactic moment falls emotionally flat amid the confusion, helped little by an overlong runtime that still does not save the film from significant gaps in its storyline. I expected much more from this given its outsize reputation and Scorsese’s skill, but it is ultimately disappointing in all but the subtleties of costume, scene, and props.