Really Surprised!

People are voting emotionally.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Atr first it was confusing to follow along but twenty minutes in I managed to sort of understand the storyline.It was interesting and I soon found out why the movie is rated R. I never heard of anything about the Five Points nor did I realize how violent people reacted to draft.

The movie started out slow, but got better as it went along. The setting in the Civil War period was a key component of the plot and context of this movie as well. The period when the north was instituting a draft caused a motive for the antagonist and conflicts for several characters. This was also a period when there was high immigration from Ireland. This movie really helped to illustrate these components, from the blatant racism and xenophobia to the internal conflicts about the draft. While the movie itself was hard to follow due to the jumping of scenes, its depiction of a key point in the Civil War helps to make the details memorable.

¨Gangs of New York¨ shows a time in U.S. history where the divide within NYC mirrored the divide in the country. The plot was good, but was hard to follow. The high quantity of characters made it them hard to follow. There was also little lead up to some events as the viewer was put into situations with little introduction to the certain situations. Certain scenes were unnecessary the the plot and did not help move the plot forward in any way, Some scenes were also unrealistic and the visual effects became better throughout the movie.Though some points in the plot were unneeded the actors did a fantastic job of moving the plot forward and keeping the very long and complex movie interesting.

The story takes place during an era of American History that's generally overlooked in the history books, beginning in 1846 (for the opening sequence) through the early part of 1863 with the Civil War in progress. Some of the film deals with the New York City draft riots that occurred when Congress passed a conscription law, but the overarching story deals with the revenge sought by Amsterdam Vallon (Leonardo DiCaprio) some sixteen years after seeing his father murdered by Native gang leader, Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting (Daniel-Day Lewis).For those of faint heart and weaker stomach, it's not an easy picture to watch with the amount of violence and bloodshed, dealt out by individuals with little regard for humanity. Alliances are switched by members of the former 'Dead Rabbits' gang after their leader, Vallon's father 'Priest' Vallon (Liam Neeson) is killed in a street brawl. It occurred to me at one point that the roles of Neeson and Day Lewis could have been reversed, that's how much they resembled each other as gang leaders.The movie doesn't rate that highly here on IMDb with a fair number of detractors in the reviews section. That surprises me somewhat, as the story is gripping from a historical perspective, and the performances by the principals are more than adequate. Because the film's locations are situated primarily in a congested area of the City known as The Five Points, you don't have the epic sweep of more highly regarded films like "Gone With the Wind", but that's a minor point. For me, the picture opened up an era of American History worthy of further study that was bypassed during my own education. It looks like I'll be spending some time there learning about The Tammany Hall years and the corruption that took place under the regime of Boss Tweed.