Gangs of New York Reviews
JWR
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...
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
Common Sense Media
Brilliant but devastating. High schoolers and up.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
EmanuelLevy.Com
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.
Full Review
| Original Score: C
TheMovieReport.com
The whole may not add up to the sum of its parts, but it's difficult to dismiss the brilliance of those parts.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Urban Cinefile
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.
Groucho Reviews
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]
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
eFilmCritic.com
Why did Scorsese spend three decades thirsting to make this movie? It's nowhere clear on the screen.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Big Picture Big Sound
Gangs becomes a standard revenge opus. And a long one at that.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Bullz-Eye.com
It's a story of violence, revenge, racial intolerance and class struggle, and it's a story told extremely well.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Combustible Celluloid
Martin Scorseses dream project finally explodes on the screen after years of planning and another year of delays.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Time Out
Top CriticIt's never less than compelling, driven by an overwhelming, larger than life performance from Day-Lewis and by Scorsese's grandiose historical imagination.
Looking Closer
Day-Lewis's sneering, roaring, monstrous performance as the Butcher will remind you of the seemingly superhuman work Robert DeNiro performed in his prime.
| Original Score: B+
Kansas City Kansan
It is unrelentingly gritty and tense.
Full Review | Original Score: A+
Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY)
Daniel Day-Lewis' magnetic portrayal of a 19th-century ganglord who butchered his enemies as readily as he carved up a freshly killed hog.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
City Pages, Minneapolis/St. Paul
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.
Apollo Guide
It will be a film that, in decades hence, will only grow in stature and importance.
Full Review
| Original Score: 88/100
Star-Democrat (Easton, MD)
Gangs of New York is a very good film striving desperately to be great.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Future Movies UK
Martin Scorsese has landed back onto UK cinema screens with a resoundingly hollow thump.
EDGE Boston
Martin Scorcese delivers an enormous blowout of a film, a biopic of New York in the 1800s... but it's too much bombast and far too loose.
Full Review
| Original Score: C+
