I think I should preface this by saying that Gangs of New York is a good movie.  If you are one of those people who feels a particular reverence for the city of New York, then you will probably enjoy it much more than I did.  I do not feel reverence for New York, and it does not hold a special place in my heart.  It is just another city to me.  I've actually never been there.  When 9/11 was happening, I wasn't thinking, "Oh my god, not New York!  Anywhere but New York!".  My thoughts were more along the lines of, "I'm glad that isn't me."  I feel the same way about Los Angeles.  If someone was invading LA, I wouldn't defend the city itself to the death.  I think I'd pack up my girl and our stuff and head for San Francisco or Las Vegas.  I guess what I'm trying to get across is that I'm not particularly concerned about which patch of dirt I get to live on.  I think Gangs of New York operates under the pretense that New York is the most important city in the U.S. and everyone should be concerned with its history and pay it due respect.  Now, onto the movie.

Gangs is about the city of New York in the mid 1800s during the time of the Civil War.  The different ethnicities of the area were all trying to carve out a particular portion of the city, but the "natives" who all looked shockingly anglo to me don't want any of the immigrants on their turf.  So Daniel Day Lewis and Liam Neeson meet up in the middle of town with their particular armies and hack each other to pieces over it.  On a side note, I thought that Lewis was a big proponent of Irish civil liberties and all things Irish.  So I was a little distracted seeing him as the leader of the natives killing the Irish.  I guess I shouldn't carry an actor's politics into the theater with me.  Anyway, Bill the Butcher (Lewis) kills 'Priest' Vallon (Neeson) in front Vallon's son (DiCaprio), in this fight and a native victory is put up on the calendar.  16 years after fleeing the scene, Amsterdam (DiCaprio) returns to the city with the intention of killing Bill. 

Gangs feels much more like a period piece than a "gangster" movie, which is the intent I think.  As a matter of fact, during the first minutes of the movie, I thought it looked particularly post-Apocalyptic as Neeson leads his son through what look to be caverns of people wearing tattered clothes and forging weapons like halberds and swords.  The opening of the movie is particularly fierce and puts you in the right frame of mind for the rest.  The sets are all amazing and the costumes and production design is all very convincing.  I'm not sure what they were convincing me of, though, because I had never heard of this particularly piece of American history.

One of the problems that I have with the movie is that I wasn't sure who I wanted to win.  I see the natives point of view in that they saw the immigrants as invaders, but the Irish were just looking for a better life.  Also, they bring up the Civil War draft and racism and lots of other issues that confuse the story.  I wanted the story to be about a boy avenging the death of his father, but it turns into more than that by the end.  Daniel Day Lewis is terrific as Bill the Butcher, and DiCaprio sells his part as the vengeful son.  I thought that Cameron Diaz was decent in a forgettable part, so I'm not sure why she got a Golden Globe nomination.  This movie is definitely worth seeing, but it doesn't feel as important as everyone is making it out to be.  Braveheart still feels more passionate in my opinion.

I understand that New York is an important city from a cultural and artistic standpoint, but since I had never heard of all this trouble and rioting in New York before, I was not really touched by the plight of the people in this movie.  I don't want to take anything away from it.  It is very well directed, well written, and well acted, but at the end, I feel no different about New York or its people.