The Film
Director Martin Scorsese, a native New Yorker, longed for decades to make this film after having come across and read a copy of author Herbert Asbury's The Gangs of New York, first published in 1928. Scorsese would not get to see his dream come to its fruition until 2002, but he is to be commended for one thing and that is the painstaking effort he put into the project trying to capture the authenticity of lower Manhattan and the Five Points during the civil-war era, by actually having the city built to scale in Rome by Set Designer Dante Feretti. The set actually becomes a character in Scorsese's film and adds to the atmosphere. Unfortunately, that's where the most of the good qualities of the film end.
At the time of its release, I was actually quite anxious to see Gangs of New York, being born and raised in the city myself, I must admit I'd always been somewhat fascinated with the historical nature of what made New York City become what it is today. I would not see the film, however, until watching it in 2004 on DVD after having seen the landmark PBS documentary series New York by Ric Burns (brother of Ken Burns). That was probably a mistake. Although the Ric Burns documentary does not solely focus on Five Points and the New York City draft riots, it covered that era in the city's history at length.
Compared to the Burns documentary, the Scorsese film feels shallow, focused far too much on aesthetics and violence, missing all of the social issues of the day that lead to the very circumstances Scorsese was trying so hard to capture these people in. Taking as his central characters the real-life Five Points gangster Bill the Butcher (Daniel Day-Lewis) and Amsterdam Vallon (Leonardo DiCaprio), the son of a man the Butcher killed years before who has returned to seek vengeance, Scorsese explores the rivalries that were known to have taken place between the gangs in Five Points -- an area in lower Manhattan centered on the intersection of Anthony (now Worth), Orange (now Baxter), Mulberry, Cross (now Mosco St./Park Row) and Little Water (no longer exists) and the eastern corner of a public park called "Paradise Square" -- what he doesn't ever do, however, is explain the cause of all the violence. He also takes liberties with important historical events.
Sure, he shows those who called themselves "Natives", the Anglo-Saxon U.S. citizens who were fighting against the rapid influx of Irish immigrants coming into the country fleeing famine in their native land, willing to work for even less than the recently freed slaves in Lincoln's civil-war era New York, but he completely misses, or skirts the real issues behind the infamous New York Draft Riots. He also fails to address in any important way the poverty, disease and high crime rates that affected the poor living in these neighborhoods at the time. So, on that count, the authenticity of the film fails miserably.
But, of course, this is historical fiction not a documentary, so, what are the merits of Gangs of New York besides the marvelously realistic set? Well, the razor thin plot and historical inaccuracies are only barely redeemed by a brilliant acting performance by Irish actor Daniel-Day Lewis who, in an ironic twist, plays the Irish-hating "Native" Bill the Butcher. His performance is not subtle, but at three-hours, subtlety might have been a disaster. Scorsese also makes wonderful use of the camera angles and lighting and the costumes are meticulously well designed; all helping to create a sense that one has been transplanted into the 19th century.
The Picture
Gangs of New York on Blu-ray Disc arrives from Disney/Miramax with its original 2.35:1 theatrical aspect ratio and a high definition 1080p/24 VC-1 video encoding. When it was originally released on DVD, the highly anticipated disc first garnered much praise for it's seemingly sharp and detailed appearance until it came under the much more critical eyes of videophiles who scrutinized the release and were critical of the appalling amounts of edge enhancement that marred the film's presentation and actual detail.
Here we are in 2008 and Gangs of New York, once again a highly anticipated release on Blu-ray, has finally arrived in the United States (a European Blu-ray Disc release has been available since summer of 2007), but not without some amount of controversy. A particular segment of reviewers have chosen to attack the picture quality of this release on the grounds that it displays the exact same faults as the DVD version which preceded it, some going as far as to proclaim it to be no better than an upscaled version of the old DVD release. I beg to differ.
The Gangs of New York DVD release contained a heavy-handed amount of edge enhancement, which left halos and ringing around every image. It was replete with mosquito effects and blurred background details. In a word, it was a disgrace. This Blu-ray Disc release, on the contrary, is a different beast altogether. Although there is some occasional use of edge enhancement that causes some slight halos to appear, most noticeable in the opening fight scene around the lamppost at the center of the Five Points, its use has been scaled back tremendously. Though I never hold with the idea of using edge enhancement, in the case of this title, it has gone from unwatcheable, to merely having an occasional hiccup. In fact, edge enhancement is rarely used on this transfer.
As for the idea that the Blu-ray looks no better than an upscaled version of the original DVD release -- I put my copy of the original DVD into my Oppo DV-980H upscaling DVD player (scaled to 1080p/60) and switched between the two releases; there is no comparison. Besides the far more obvious haloing and compression artifacts on the DVD release, the Blu-ray exceeds the DVD in depth of field, flesh tones -- which were more natural and displayed far less red push on the Blu-ray edition -- and black levels, which the Blu-ray captured flawlessly, even in shadow detail.
With all of that being said, the Blu-ray is not without its faults. Obviously, the use of any edge enhancement is always cause for concern and reason to hold down the rating. The worst part of this transfer is the condition of the master itself, not any processing that has been done to the film. Anyone that says otherwise is trying to foist a bogeyman upon us and I'm not taking the bait. The source could also have been cleaned up a bit, showing some wear throughout, and at one point a colored line straight down the left side of the frame was apparent for a few minutes. There was also a bit of softness to the overall look of the transfer in both foreground and background detail. Playing the title in a Playstation 3 and viewing the bitrate meter also reveals wild fluctuations in the VC-1 encoding's bitrate, often dropping as low as 8Mbps and jumping to as high as 40Mbps. One wonders if this could also be what is causing some of the obvious artifacts on this disc and if, perhaps, this release is not faulty in some way?
In all, however, this Blu-ray release is much more film-like in its appearance than the previous DVD release and far more lacking in obvious technical flaws as well, even if it won't become a reference quality release and isn't up to Disney's usual standards of quality for Blu-ray Disc releases.
The Sound
Audio options included on this release are English uncompressed PCM 5.1 (48kHz/24-bit), and English and French Dolby Digital 5.1. For the purposes of this review I listened to the uncompressed PCM soundtrack. I have to say that, for the most part, this disc's mix is quite uninteresting. There is nothing wrong with it from a technical standpoint -- dialogue is intelligible, there are good dynamics, special effects like gunshots and clanking knives sound crisp and natural -- but most of the time there is not much going on.
The surround channels, mainly used for ambience, are only more fully utilized in livelier scenes such as the opening Five Points gang fight, and there are times when dialogue is even panned directionally across the front channel to follow characters, but the mix lacks any overall cohesiveness and a sense of spaciousness. The LFE is occasionally put to good use, particularly at the film's end when the cannons start to boom.
The Extras
Disney/Miramax haven't offered any special supplemental materials for this Blu-ray Disc release of Gangs of New York, deciding instead to merely port over all the same extras from the DVD. All of the video extras are standard definition in a 1.35:1 aspect ratio and, although there is not an overwhelming abundance of extras proffered, what is offered does provide a good glimpse into the work that went into creating the film and its set and helps to provide a little historical background for the film's setting.
Extras provided on this release are:
Final Thoughts
With Gangs of New York, Martin Scorsese missed an opportunity to tell an important tale about a harrowing period in not only the history of New York City, but of the United States. Unfortunately, he missed the true meaning of it all and instead has given us a period film that, though authentic in its attention to detail, lacks the deeper level of substance to make it truly great. This Blu-ray Disc edition of Gangs of New York suffers a similar fate in that it fixes some of the more glaring flaws of the previous DVD release, but doesn't go quite far enough and still retains some processing issues that keep it from being a reference title.
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Product Details
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