Product Details

• Actors: Roger Ashton-Griffiths, Jim Broadbent, Peter-Hugo Daly, Daniel Day-Lewis, Leonardo DiCaprio
• Directors: Martin Scorsese
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 2
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Studio: Miramax Home Entertainment
• DVD Release Date: July 1, 2003
• Run Time: 167 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (575 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00005JKN9
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,076 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #42 in	Movies & TV > Drama > Crime & Criminals
  #89 in	Movies & TV > Action & Adventure > Crime

• For more information about "Gangs of New York (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Gangs of New York may achieve greatness with the passage of time. Mixed reviews were inevitable for a production this grand (and this troubled behind the scenes), but it's as distinguished as any of director Martin Scorsese's more celebrated New York stories. From its astonishing 1846 prologue to the city's infernal draft riots of 1863, the film aspires to erase the decorum of textbooks and chronicle 19th-century New York as a cauldron of street warfare. The hostility is embodied in a tale of primal vengeance between Irish American son Amsterdam Vallon (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his father's ruthless killer and "Nativist" gang leader Bill "the Butcher" Cutting (Daniel Day-Lewis, brutally inspired), so named for his lethal talent with knives. Vallon's vengeance is only marginally compelling; DiCaprio is arguably miscast, and Cameron Diaz (as Vallon's pickpocket lover) is adrift in a film with little use for women. Despite these weaknesses, Scorsese's mastery blossoms in his expert melding of personal and political trajectories; this is American history written in blood, unflinching, authentic, and utterly spectacular. --Jeff Shannon

Product Description

This motion picture event from acclaimed director Martin Scorsese earned 10 Academy Award(R) nominations including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor, along with 5 Golden Globe Award nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Song! Leonardo DiCaprio (TITANIC), Cameron Diaz (CHARLIE'S ANGELS), and Daniel Day-Lewis (THE BOXER) star in this epic tale of vengeance and survival! As waves of immigrants swell the population of New York, lawlessness and corruption thrive in lower Manhattan's Five Points section. After years of incarceration, young Irish immigrant Amsterdam Vallon (DiCaprio) returns seeking revenge against the rival gang leader (Day-Lewis) who killed his father. But Amsterdam's personal vendetta becomes part of the gang warfare that erupts as he and his fellow Irishmen fight to carve a place for themselves in their newly adopted homeland!

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

105 of 127 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Where is the director's cut?!?!, May 27, 2003

By	Saxon Kane "Sax" (Tucson, AZ USA) - See all my reviews

One of the big controversies surrounding this film was that Martin Scorcese was forced to cut nearly an hour of footage from his final vision in order to get the studio to release it. That's understandable, as not many people will be willing to sit through a 4 hour movie in theatres. So with the release of it on DVD, we should get the complete version, right? Well... it doesn't seem so.

The details on this DVD mention nothing about extra footage. Isn't one of the benefits of the DVD format that we get to see what the director intended before politics and marketing step in? I for one would like to see the COMPLETE movie, the movie that Scorcese wanted to make, rather than the movie which was released, even though that movie was quite good.

I have a feeling that the studio is just doing the usual DVD scam of releasing the theatrical version as soon as possible to catch people while they are still hyped on this movie from the theatrical release and post-Oscar boost. After a few months, hopefully they will release a director's cut, causing many people to go back and buy the DVD a second time. I, for one, will wait as long as it takes until the full version comes out. I'm sick of getting scammed by these studios into buying one version, and then seeing a "special edition" with all sorts of extras come out a few months later. Not gonna happen this time, buddy-boy.

30 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Godawful Blu Ray disk, June 24, 2008

By	M. Hafner (Switzerland) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Gangs of New York [Blu-ray] (Blu-ray)

Disney just slapped the old transfer made for the DVD on this BD disk. The DVD was notorious for bad image quality with grotesquely overdone digital sharpening and noise filtering. The Blu Ray is the same, justh with additional resolution to see all the uglyness with enhanced clarity.
This is a crap transfer that should be withdrawn immediately or it will damage Disney's reputation of releasing high quality HD disks. Yes, it is this bad compared to the state of the art from Disney and other studios.

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars May be Scorsese's greatest work., June 5, 2003

By	Barack Obama (Washington DC) - See all my reviews

Perhaps it was inevitable that Gangs Of New York would recieve such a cold shoulder from critics, the Academy, and the viewing public. Every time Martin Scorsese has presented us with one of his greatest, most personal films, he has been shot down, his vision dismissed as hogwash, only to be accepted as a great film years later.

Case in point: Raging Bull was widely panned by many upon its first release, and Scorsese was passed over for Robert Redford's Ordinary People, a good but far inferior film. Raging Bull is now recognized as one of the greatest of all American films. When Scorsese released his most personal film, The Last Temptation Of Christ, it was met with controversy and disdain. Again he was passed over come award time, and now his Jesus bio is seen as one of the greatest films to tackle the subject of Jesus Christ.

I felt that Gnags Of New York was a fantastic film, and upon seeing it, I walked out of the theatre feeling that I had seen a film that would immediately be accepted as one of Scorsese's greatest films. How wrong I was.

Yet I don't understand the cold shoulder in this case, because there is so much to like about Gangs Of New York. We've all said great things about the performance of Daniel Day-Lewis, but his great performance overshadowed Leonardo DiCaprio's, which wasn't all that bad. I personally think we all need to get over Titanic; this kid can act. Cameron Diaz is fine in her role; note the scene in which she and DiCaprio discuss her abortion. She shows that she is just as good a dramatic as she is a comic actress.

The costume design and art direction is impeccable. Scorsese and his crew perfectly captured the New York of the Civil War era. Reviewers have argued that New York couldn't look that bad. As a history student, I can assure you that it did.

Finally, no one has seemed to notice that Scorsese has made a picture that combines the greatest of his influences. Gangs Of New York captures the best of Italian neorealism and grand classic Hollywood spectacle. In combining the two, he has made what may be his greatest film: a melding of De Sica and Fellini, John Huston and D.W. Griffith, into a style that is uniquely Scorseseian. Gangs Of New York rushes along in its two hour, 45 minute running time. Never once did I find it boring or slow moving.

So to those who have said it is a bad picture, I pose this challenge: How would you change it? I've heard lots of criticism but few solutions. Perhaps there are so few solutions because Scorsese has made a picture so perfect that it is impossible for many of us to comprehend its depth.