Bluejake

If you see just two movies this holiday season, make sure that neither one is the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers or Gangs of New York.

The Lord of the Rings (hours four through eight) is emblematic of a trend in Hollywood of relying on scenery and special effects to gloss over weaknesses in the acting and plotting of the movie. Sure, it's impressive to watch those sweeping helicopter shots- for about fifteen minutes. Afterwards, you are left alone with Frodo, Golem, and Samwise Gamgee's sadomasochistic gay-themed love triangle for what seemed like two or three days. I can imagine what it must have been like in the editing room- "Can we put in thirty or forty more minutes of Viggo Mortensen glowering at his enemies?" "No? Then let's throw in another thirty or forty panning shots of New Zealand's famous mountains." This is the sort of movie that panders to the audience with scene after scene of over the top violence (Editor: "Can Viggo destroy forty thousand of his enemies with just a sword and his good looks? I don't see why not.") in an enormous effort to distract from the vacuous performance of the cast. Bonus points for having just two actresses in the entire film. And that is counting Liv Tyler, who doesn't seem to have any lines.

Gangs of New York engages the same spirit of quantity over quality for much of its seven or eight hours of running time. Maybe that's an exaggeration, but I lost consciousness due to sheer boredom during the middle, and it felt like a lot of time had passed. In fact, it felt like I was watching an entirely different movie, but the people I was with reassured me that was just a result of the terrible script. I'd read Herbert Asbury's book about a year ago, and I liked it for what it was- a series of anecdotes about lower Manhattan from about 1820 to 1910. His book has no perceivable plot. Sure, Bill the Butcher appears, but he lasts about two pages and ends up dying in a saloon on Lower Broadway. The movie engages the book for much of the background plot- the scenery and the names of characters and gangs, but it should have stopped there. Unfortunately, the movie also carried through the total lack of focus, sensationalism, and cartoonishness that colored much of Asbury's writing. It's pointless to get into all of the things that made this movie suck- although the acting would probably be the first place to start. Would anyone in their right mind cast Leonardo Dicaprio as a gangster? He would have been better as the female lead. The directing is nothing hot either- it's sad to see how far Martin Scorcese has fallen since Mean Streets.

If there was one thing that really pushed me over the edge to an outright hatred of this movie, it would have to be the racial politics. You see, Leonardo DiCaprio is the leader of an Irish gang named the Dead Rabbits. Now, if there is only one thing you remember about Irish gangs during the 1860s, it should be that they were no friend of the African American. Basically, the Irish were being drafted to fight in the Civil War, and they weren't too happy about sticking their necks out for the slaves. Especially when freed slaves and other blacks were competing with them for the same low wage jobs in New York. Every chance they got, the Irish Gangs would run up to Hell's Kitchen or to SoHo and lynch a few dozen African Americans, and the biggest riot of all started when a mob of mostly Irish citizens decided to torch a black orphanage up around 33rd Street. So it seems pretty unlikely that DiCaprio's gang would have a black kid in it- it would be like the SS having a couple of Jews on board just to fill out the racial diversity of the group. I guess the film would have been less marketable if DiCap's character was an unrepentant and virulent racist. But you never know with Hollywood buzz.

Anyway- has anyone heard of any good movies that might wash the taste of these sorry efforts out of my mouth?

Ideas