Gangs of New York (2002)

All Critics (202) | Top Critics (45) | Fresh (160) | Rotten (51) | DVD (46)

It's never less than compelling, driven by an overwhelming, larger than life performance from Day-Lewis and by Scorsese's grandiose historical imagination.

February 9, 2006 Full Review

Time Out

Top Critic

The result reverberates on the screen with a deadly force and fury more intense than anything Mr. Scorsese has yet achieved on the meanest and most beloved streets he could imagine or recall.

January 16, 2003 Full Review

Andrew Sarris

New York Observer

Top Critic

What we're left with has the patness of a history lesson about our roots and the melting pot and what it means to be an American.

January 16, 2003 Full Review | Comment (1)

Peter Rainer

New York Magazine

Top Critic

You have to honor its mad ambition. But sadly, it feels like a dream too long deferred.

January 14, 2003

David Ansen

Newsweek

Top Critic

Scorsese's congested, conflicted, entrancing achievement.

January 13, 2003 Full Review

Richard Corliss

TIME Magazine

Top Critic

A triumph of pure craft and passionate heart.

January 9, 2003

Peter Travers

Rolling Stone

Top Critic

Scorsese scores some fine political points along the way and demonstrates the mastery of his craft in every scene, but the underlying theme of brutal revenge at any cost loses its way too early on...

March 2, 2012 Full Review

S. James Wegg

JWR

Brilliant but devastating. High schoolers and up.

December 24, 2010 Full Review | Comments (2)

Nell Minow

Common Sense Media

One of Scorsese's weakest films, a wannabe historical epic that's essentially a formulaic revenge saga; the only reason to see it is Daniel Day-Lewis' compelling performance as Bill the Butcher.

November 23, 2010 Full Review

Emanuel Levy

EmanuelLevy.Com

[A] flawed masterpiece.

February 3, 2010 Full Review

Philip French

Observer [UK]

The whole may not add up to the sum of its parts, but it's difficult to dismiss the brilliance of those parts.

February 18, 2009 Full Review

Michael Dequina

TheMovieReport.com

It's a story of such relevance to New York, to America and even to the rest of the world, that just had to be told on film with as much impact as a filmmaker can muster. And Martin Scorsese musters much.

October 18, 2008 Full Review

Urban Cinefile Critics

Urban Cinefile

It's not a perfect film, by any stretch of the imagination, and when there are cinematic sins they're sins of excess. But Gangs of New York entertains.

July 9, 2008 Full Review

James Plath

Movie Metropolis

The impact is all in the broad strokes of Scorsese's design: the corresponding coming-of-age stories of three confused and violent adolescents: Amsterdam Vallon, New York City, and America. [Blu-Ray]

June 30, 2008 Full Review

Peter Canavese

Groucho Reviews

Why did Scorsese spend three decades thirsting to make this movie? It's nowhere clear on the screen.

February 13, 2008 Full Review | Comments (14)

Rob Gonsalves

eFilmCritic.com

Gangs becomes a standard revenge opus. And a long one at that.

July 14, 2007 Full Review

Joe Lozito

Big Picture Big Sound

It's a story of violence, revenge, racial intolerance and class struggle, and it's a story told extremely well.

November 29, 2006 Full Review

Jason Zingale

Bullz-Eye.com

Martin Scorseses dream project finally explodes on the screen after years of planning and another year of delays.

May 26, 2006 Full Review

Jeffrey M. Anderson

Combustible Celluloid

Day-Lewis's sneering, roaring, monstrous performance as the Butcher will remind you of the seemingly superhuman work Robert DeNiro performed in his prime.

December 6, 2004

Jeffrey Overstreet

Looking Closer

It is unrelentingly gritty and tense.

October 14, 2004 Full Review

Steve Crum

Kansas City Kansan

Daniel Day-Lewis' magnetic portrayal of a 19th-century ganglord who butchered his enemies as readily as he carved up a freshly killed hog.

June 23, 2004 Full Review

Judith Egerton

Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY)

Gangs is Scorsese's impassioned, elegiac portrait of a time when blows were delivered with fists, bats, and blades rather than airplanes, anthrax, or keyboard strokes; it's his look back at a lost world, his urban western.

May 19, 2004 Full Review

Rob Nelson

City Pages, Minneapolis/St. Paul

It will be a film that, in decades hence, will only grow in stature and importance.

March 16, 2004 Full Review

Dan Jardine

Apollo Guide

• 1. William Cutting a.k.a. Bill the Butcher: You seen his portrait downstairs?
  2. Amsterdam Vallon: Mmmhmmm.
  3. William Cutting a.k.a. Bill the Butcher: Is your mouth all glued up with cunny juice? I asked you a question.
  4. Amsterdam Vallon: I said, I seen it sir.
  – Submitted by Bryan P (2 months ago)
• 1. Amsterdam Vallon: In the end, they put candles on the bodies so's their friends, if they had any, could know them in the dark. The city did this free of charge. Shang, Jimmy Spoils, Hell-cat, McGloin, and more. Friend or foe, didn't make no difference now. It was four days and nights before the worst of the mob was finally put down. We never knew how many New Yorkers died that week before the city was finally delivered. My father told me we was all born of blood and tribulation, and so then too was our great city. But for those of us what lived and died in them furious days, it was like everything we knew was mildly swept away. And no matter what they did to build this city up again... for the rest of time... it would be like no one even knew we was ever here.
  – Submitted by Adam O (3 months ago)
• 1. William "Boss" Tweed: [as an anti-draft riot takes place] Sweet Jesus, war does terrible things to people.
  – Submitted by Adam O (3 months ago)
• 1. William "Boss" Tweed: Remember the first rule of politics. The ballots don't make the results, the counters make the results. The counters. Keep counting.
  – Submitted by Adam O (3 months ago)
• 1. Amsterdam Vallon: My father gave his life, making this country what it is. Murdered by the British with all of his men on the twenty fifth of July, anno domini, 1814. Do you think I'm going to help you befoul his legacy, by giving this country over to them, what's had no hand in the fighting for it? Why, because they come off a boat crawling with lice and begging you for soup.
  – Submitted by Adam O (3 months ago)
• 1. William Cutting a.k.a. Bill the Butcher: Here's the thing. I don't give a tuppenny fuck about your moral conundrum, you meat-headed shit-sack. That's more or less the thing. And I want you to go out there... You, nobody else. None of your little minions. I want you to go out there. And I want you to punish the person who's responsible for murdering this poor little rabbit. Is that understood?
  – Submitted by Adam O (3 months ago)

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