Gangs of New York (2002)

Martin Scorsese ushered in the '00s with the start of a beautiful friendship - with Leonardo DiCaprio, who's been called Marty's new DeNiro - and this epic look at the birth of modern New York City set, like Casino (albeit in positive terms) against personal rise-and-fall stories.

Sixteen years after the murder of his father (Liam Neeson), young Amsterdam Vallon (DiCaprio) returns to New York and his old neighborhood, the Five Points. After meeting up with old friends and new acquaintances - chief among them the pickpocket prostitute Jenny Everdeane (Cameron Diaz) - Amsterdam finds himself falling in with a gang led by his father's murderer, the man he's vowed to kill: the merciless Bill "The Butcher" Cutting (the ever-riveting Daniel Day-Lewis). Meanwhile, Boss Tweed (Jim Broadbent) is coming to power, the Civil War rages, and an impending draft notice might just ignite the powderkeg that is New York City.

As with every Martin Scorsese movie reviewed here thus far (with the possible exception of Shutter Island), Gangs of New York is a mesmerizing epic, with characters and events representing larger forces and ideals of national consequence. On one side, Amsterdam and his immigrants; on the other, Bill the Butcher and his nativists. Already, then, the conflict becomes something more than just two men in battle. There are other issues at stake - what it means to be an American, what the nature of honor is, and even an examination of the political process. All of these plates Scorsese keeps spinning without ever losing sight of the immediate Amsterdam/Bill conflict, and in that respect the film succeeds.

Scorsese is like Sidney Lumet in that he reliably casts actors who turn in star performances, even if it wasn't quite expected of them (prime example for Lumet: Vin Diesel in Find Me Guilty). Gangs of New York begins a series of (to date) four films Scorsese has made with DiCaprio, and it's here that we get glimmers of the actor that DiCaprio has since become. While his performance isn't completely polished - his Irish accent slips in places - it's a giant leap forward from Titanic and a good start on the road to The Departed. Diaz, of whom I've never been a big fan, is decent here, her accent slightly more consistent and a hair/makeup job that almost lets you forget that this is the same actress responsible for Charlie's Angels. Bit players get chances to shine; Broadbent is mirthfully corrupt as Boss Tweed, Liam Neeson is a show-stealer in the film's brutal opening reel, and as an Irish cop John C. Reilly proves that he is, like all good comedians, a fine dramatic actor too. The greatest performance, unsurprisingly, is Daniel Day-Lewis's villainous turn as Bill the Butcher, a baddie of the highest order and the kind of man who could keep company with Deadwood's Al Swearengen and No Country for Old Men's Anton Chigurh; that Day-Lewis lost the Oscar that year is a travesty, though the early inklings one gets of his Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood suggest that this is an actor who builds on what he does until the majority sit up and take notice.

At nearly three hours, this sprawling epic might not be for everyone. Unlike the Kill Bill series, which was a non-stop wham/bam "roaring rampage of revenge," Gangs of New York is more deliberate in its pacing. After a showstopping opening (successfully ignoring Rip Torn's advice from The Larry Sanders Show, "Never open with a showstopper"), Amsterdam encounters Bill almost immediately upon returning to New York, simmering and gathering information before he makes his play for vengeance - which promptly pans out completely unpredictably, leaving Amsterdam to slink back, lick his wounds, and restrategize. And so the film contains three action pieces - beginning, first climax, and second climax - with little "action" in between; instead, the focus is on character (story vs. plot, as Scorsese would put it) and scenery - downright gorgeous scenery, with Scorsese's trademark meticulous attention to detail and a high degree of historical accuracy as far as capturing a bygone era on film.

While it's not Scorsese's absolute finest work (that honor, in my humble opinion, belongs to The Departed), Gangs of New York is arguably among his more polished pieces. If nothing else, Daniel Day-Lewis proves himself a first-rate actor as the terrifying villain of the piece.

Gangs of New York, like nearly everything else Scorsese makes, is rated R, this time "for intense strong violence, sexuality/nudity and language." There aren't really words to describe how unflinchingly brutal the violence is in this movie, as it's probably the most intensely violent of Scorsese's movies. Prostitutes are topless in three separate scenes, and the characters make brief but vulgar sexual remarks. As for language, there are more racial slurs than F-bombs, though the main justification for the R rating, I'm sure, is the downright savage violence.

The Box (2009)

In spite of a B-list acting cast and an overwhelming slate of negative reviews, I had such high hopes for The Box. As it stands, I'm never watching another Richard Kelly movie so long as I live. The film isn't entirely bad, but the filmmaker is.

The conceit, based upon a short story by Richard Matheson of The Twilight Zone fame, is deceptively simple: disfigured stranger Arlington Steward (Frank Langella) arrives on the doorstep of suburban government workers Norma and Arthur Lewis (Cameron Diaz and James Marsden, respectively), bearing a mysterious box. Push the button, he invites, promising $1,000,000 and the death of a stranger in return.

Here the trailers conclude. Unfortunately, all that drama unfolds within half an hour of the film's two-hour runtime. What follows is essentially an abduction of an unsuspecting audience, a tour by force and not de force through a tangled plot involving aliens (surprise! Did you miss the heavyhanded foreshadowing?), advanced technology, and human nature (with a major dose of Sartre thrown in apparently to show us how smart the filmmakers are to have read Sartre). I take no pleasure in the evisceration to follow, just as I can tell that the filmmakers found this a joyless experience.

Everything about The Box is slipshod and muddy, unattractive and unappealing. The acting is incredibly lackluster, with Diaz slipping in and out of what might be an attempt at a Southern accent (and the occasional limp) and with Marsden counting paychecks while dreaming of more substantial roles (he was delightful, don't forget, in Hairspray). Though Langella is suitably menacing as the shady Mr. Steward, it's quite obvious he's slumming; his disfigurement causes no apparent speech impediment, and his gravelly monotone bears none of the emotion behind his solid performance as Nixon in Frost/Nixon. Oh, and James Rebhorn is in it. Yeah, that guy.

The larger part of the blame, though, belongs on Richard Kelly's shoulders. I've made no bones about the fact that I absolutely downright hated the (in my eyes) irredeemable Donnie Darko, and had I known that The Box was Kelly's work as well I probably would have left it on the rental shelf. For starters, Kelly's at fault for not pushing his actors harder, particularly when it comes to Ms. Diaz's utterly inconsistent portrayal of Norma Lewis. More problematic is Kelly's inability to rein in the movie itself. The Box is like the television show Lost at its worst - wildly imaginative with overtures toward mythological significance but without any sense of direction, cohesion, or purpose. Oscillating wildly between plot points that only coincide in a "meh" of a climax, the film is big on anticipation and small on bang.

The Box retreads themes from Donnie Darko, so if you liked that clunker (which, if you'll recall, is responsible for introducing Jake Gyllenhaal to Hollywood, so that's strike two for the flick) you'll probably lap this one right up. Kelly's obsession with tortured protagonists at the mercy of forces beyond human understanding - here, "the ones that control the lightning" - bleeds through, as does the irrational and ultimately empty presence of transdimensional portals; though these elements seem to be building to something, they ultimately amount to little more than homages to Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Worse, the film is brutally disjointed. Aside from the misleading marketing which drew me in with a plotline the film quickly discarded, The Box snaps back and forth between scenes and vignettes that don't quite make sense; the parts simply don't add up. Characters appear and disappear seemingly at random - a gaffe the movie tries to bandage up with the aforementioned portals - while plot points are introduced via severe suspensions of disbelief, only to be quickly abandoned. The film further invalidates itself by wrapping its mysteries into a giant Gordian knot at the climax; if, for example, the "beings" can override free will, what's the point of testing free will with the red button? Finally, the film suggests a cyclical nature to man's dog-eat-dog attitude toward itself, though the presence of a cycle again makes moot the issue of testing humanity; the button is always going to be pushed, and yet Mr. Steward keeps offering it. The effect is one of uselessness, a frustrating hybrid of "So why did you put me through this?" and "So what did I watch, anyway?"

The film's greatest insult is to Matheson, who was a more than serviceable writer in his day. His original story, and the Twilight Zone episode based upon it, both get shout-outs here, but Kelly seems eager to discard Matheson's original "Monkey's Paw"-esque intent - to question how well we know each other - in favor of slogging through his same old motifs. This is tantamount to a betrayal of the source material, and I would have advocated taking Matheson's name off the picture entirely. Next time, Mr. Kelly, just write your own story. Or better yet, just don't.

Tragically for Matheson and the strong premise, The Box is an unfocused mess, overwhelmingly disjointed and ultimately unfulfilling. Better leave this one unopened.
The Box is rated PG-13 "PG-13 for thematic elements, some violence and disturbing images." Um... there's some shooting, and Frank Langella is missing half of his face.