Grade: A-

Verdict: Daniel Day-Lewis gives a blistering, monumental performance in Scorsese's imperfect but eye-filling epic.

Details: Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz. Directed by Martin Scorsese. Rated R for intense violence, sexuality, nudity and language. Two hours, 47 minutes.

See it: Local theaters and showtimes for Gangs of New York

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Review:
Martin Scorsese has wanted to make "Gangs of New York" for over a quarter of a century. Luckily, he never could. Otherwise, his movie might not have starred Daniel Day-Lewis, one of the greatest actors of his generation, An Oscar-winner for his role in 1989's "My Left Foot," Day-Lewis hasn't made a film since 1997's "The Boxer."

His performance as Bill the Butcher, the movie's nattily dressed monster, is stunning. It's one of those fully realized characters that you can't forget — like Vito Corleone or Norma Desmond or Charles Foster Kane. Part thug, part swell, he's a preening brute with a sense of humor and a distinctive walk that's part swagger, part stalker. Even more amazingly, throughout the picture, Day-Lewis does a riff on Robert De Niro — that dissembling grin, the brusque New York accent, the cocky emphasis on certain words. (Listen to his grandstanding "Whoopsie Daisy!" while throwing knives at Cameron Diaz.) In fact, he does a better De Niro that De Niro does this days.

Set in mid-19th-century New York, in a putrid slice of lower Manhattan known as Five Points, "Gangs" begins in 1846. Almost the first thing we see is a straight razor — and the bloody nick it inflicts. It's not a bad hint for what's to follow. The man shaving is Priest Vallon (Liam Neeson), the leader of the Dead Rabbits, an Irish-Catholic gang mostly made up of newly-arrived immigrants. Bill the Butcher has gathered his Protestant, American-born Nativists to settle whose turf Five Points will be.

Threading his way through a labyrinth of underground caves, Michael Ballhaus's camera pulls back to reveal a multitiered lower depths, inhabited by squirming masses like something out of a Hieronymous Bosch painting. Vallon leads his men out of the dark and into the light of Five Points. In front of them stretches an unblemished snowy field. It makes you think of what Alfred Hitchcock once said about why he used blonde heroines: "It's like snow. Blood shows up better on them."

The battle is joined — a razor-sharp slaughter using knives, hatchets, cleavers and anything else that can puncture or slice — and the once-pristine field is turned into a profane mockery of a Currier & Ives print. The massacre ends when Bill kills Vallon in front of Vallon's little boy. In a twisted display of respect for a fallen comrade, Bill declares, "Ears and noses will be the trophies of the day, but no hand can touch him."

Cut to 1862. Vallon's grown-up son, Amsterdam (Leonardo DiCaprio), returns to Five Points. Remaining incognito, he insinuates himself into Bill's gang, eventually becoming a favorite son. He also becomes involved with the prettiest pickpocket in New York, Jenny Everdeane (Diaz), who also has a history with Bill.

That's it. A traditional Hollywood combo of father-son themes and love triangle. "Gangs" is the closest Scorsese has ever come to formulaic Tinseltown-Think. But as happened in "Titanic," where the immensity of the tragedy buried the drippy love stuff, something of the same thing happens here — although Scorsese uses the vast panorama of American history instead of expensive special effects.

The enormity of this movie's backdrop overwhelms the meager and familiar narrative we are given. "Gangs" is one of the most thrilling history lessons ever put on screen. We learn about the Draft Riots of 1863, which resulted in the greatest loss of life in Manhattan until 9/11. Sparked by a forced conscription into the Union Army (unless you were a rich boy and could buy your way out for $300), the uprising lasted four days and spilled uptown (around Gramercy Park) where millionaire homes were looted or destroyed.

Conscription is also the fate of the thousands of Irish immigrants arriving every day. Insulted and strong-armed by Bill and his boys, they make their way to a table where they're told to sign their citizenship papers and their draft papers at the same time. Next thing they know, they're being marched past the coffins of their predecessors and shipped off to a war they don't know about or understand. "Where's Tennessee?" wonders one.

Equally compelling is Scorsese's sense of time and place. Dante Ferretti's production design and Sandy Powell's costumes have a slight theatrical edge, like a production of "The Threepenny Opera." There are dozens of picturesque moments. When rival firefighters arrive at the same fire, they'd rather fight each other than put out the flames. Later, the "concerned" wealthy daintily tour the area, like a slum social.

Scorsese also celebrates the era's colorful language. Gangs' names are as dazzlingly imaginative as any Marvel comic: the Plug Uglies, the Swamp Angels, the Daybreak Boys, the Shirttails. There are a dozen different names for thieves, the best being a turtle dove — someone who dresses like a maid and pilfers well-to-do homes. Amsterdam says admiringly of Jenny, "It takes a lot of sand to be a turtle dove."

The filmmaker is still better at rat-a-tat movies like "Mean Streets" or "Taxi Driver" than he is at epics. His energy and particular brilliance are more scaled to that kind of work. However, his commitment to this material and his curiosity about this era (so filled with gangs who preceded the gangs he knows so well) is palpable. Imagine his rapid-fire synapses applied to Sergio Leone's "Once Upon a Time in America" and you'll get the idea. (Note the final shot of the World Trade Center, its twin towers looming over an ancient Irish cemetery like a tomb-to-be). Yet Scorsese will always be Scorsese; there's even a weird little scene in which someone takes offense at being called a Fiddling Ben à la the "mook" scene in "Mean Streets."

The cast is like one big plum pudding. Stick in your thumb and you pull out Jim Broadbent as Boss Tweed, Tammany Hall's flamboyantly crooked leader; Brendan Gleeson (his head like a Toby jug) as an Irish hooligan turned politician; John C. Reilly as a corrupt cop whose cheery Lucky Charms accent is surefire evidence he's on the take from Bill and the other gangs.

Given the chance to play someone other than an adorable bimbo, Diaz dazzles. And DiCaprio, as the vengeful Amsterdam, seems like a totally different actor than he was in "Titanic" or in next week's Spielberg comedy, "Catch Me If You Can." He has the heft of a beefy boy-o and the forceful wariness of someone with a bloody secret.

"Gangs of New York" is a fever-sprawl of a movie, a melting-pot panorama, brought to full boil. As Amsterdam might remark, this movie has a lot of sand.