"Dashing between excellent and flawed, Scorsese's sprawling epic flits between a gritty revenge tale and a historic period drama.
Set in the mid 1800's, focusing on the notorious gangs of the five points in New York, the film definitely looks the part.
From every costume to building, this screams of a trained eye that has fine tuned every small detail to impeccable detail. This instills an almost unconscious sense of validity that lends the characters that inhabit it a vibrant and grounded sense of realism - vital if we are to care for the protagonist and his journey over this almost three hour piece.
Through Daniel Day Lewis this film evolves from respectable to masterful. His performance is hypnotic, evoking both astute awe and breathless fear, as he plays a ruthless boss running the five points after killing DiCaprio's father in a bloody and thrilling opener.
Alas, one performance, even as astonishing as Lewis's, cannot save a film. The film meanders frequently, almost losing itself in the spider's web of a plot it threads itself. All too quickly subplots are begun and finishing, with an ending rushed that feels like 5 fragmented ideas instead of one or two completed ones"
- 7/10
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