Gangs of New York
Miramax Films | Release Date: December 20, 2002 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
72
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 39 Critic Reviews
Positive:
27
Mixed:
12
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Rolling StonePeter Travers
Gangs of New York is something better than perfect: It's thrillingly alive. Read full review
100
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
A magnificent throwback to an almost vanished era of epic filmmaking by great filmmakers in thrall to their own passions, rather than to the studio bookkeepers. Read full review
91
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
Everything is vast and hugely ambitious in Martin Scorsese's magisterial, scrambled historical epic. Read full review
90
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
A grand achievement in history and anthropology, supporting its ambition and scope with a sumptuous re-creation of the period and an immediacy that allows a forgotten past to barrel into the present. Read full review
90
TimeRichard Corliss
This daring, perhaps confusing declaration of irrelevance suggests that the epic is a form a director like Scorsese must subvert even as he invokes it. But it doesn't erase the sordid splendor of Scorsese's congested, conflicted, entrancing achievement. Read full review
90
VarietyTodd McCarthy
Bears all the earmarks of a magnum opus for Martin Scorsese: Fascinating and fresh material about his beloved New York City, an epic reach, an equally epic gestation period, a dynamic criminal element, combustible socio-political-religious elements, outstanding actors and sophisticated allusions to cinema history that inform and enrich the experience. Read full review
90
The New York TimesA.O. Scott
This is historical filmmaking without the balm of right-thinking ideology, either liberal or conservative. Gangs of New York is nearly a great movie. I suspect that, over time, it will make up the distance. Read full review
90
Washington PostMichael O'Sullivan
Scorsese creates a film so resonant that it is both a work of great art and an anthropological document. Read full review
90
SlateDavid Edelstein
It's a magnificent achievement—holes, tatters, crudities, screw-ups, and all. Read full review
88
USA TodayMike Clark
If Martin Scorsese's staggeringly ambitious one-of-a-kind finally has too many flaws to be great, it has as much greatness in it as any movie this year. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
Rips up the postcards of American history and reassembles them into a violent, blood-soaked story of our bare-knuckled past. Read full review
88
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
Each major character is complex, none more so than Bill. He's almost Shakespearean in scope. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy Burr
Scorsese and his team of Grade A talents are working on an operatic scale here, and like many operas, this is long, overwrought, sprawling, and more than frequently brilliant. It also hits just enough discordant notes to keep it from greatness. Read full review
80
Film ThreatRich Cline
This is a spacious, robust movie that grabs hold of us and doesn't let go for nearly three hours. Read full review
80
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
Throbs with an ambition that sends it soaring, then brings it down.
78
Austin ChronicleMarjorie Baumgarten
The best Scorsese we've seen in a decade. Read full review
75
New York Daily NewsJami Bernard
The movie turns choppy in the final third, but it is a monumental achievement nonetheless. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
Lacks one thing -- an epic grandeur. Read full review
75
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
There is greatness in Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York: titanic acting, violent poetry, moviemaking on a grand scale, a real air of daring. And there is flab in it as well, and confusion. Read full review
75
New York PostJonathan Foreman
Though never dull and often visually beautiful, this work of operatic sweep doesn't fulfill its own ambitions. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
Doesn't come close to masterpiece status. There are some great individual scenes and a tremendous performance by Daniel Day-Lewis, but the connecting material is mediocre, leading to the occasional twinge of dissatisfaction. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
The movie is strong in sound and fury, weak in nuance and insight. Read full review
75
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
All of Scorsese's movies deliver a mixed message, but this one is downright schizophrenic. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)Peter Rainer
Stunning, and it has the added bonus of being about an era that is virtually new to movies. As a dramatic achievement, however, it is not quite so amazing. Read full review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
While the initial sequence is glorious, the last is a shambles. Read full review
63
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
Gangs of New York is many things, but a masterpiece is not one of them. It is primarily, and somewhat surprisingly, a poky western, with a vengeful orphan. Read full review
63
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
Unfortunately, it lacks emotional lift or folkloric fervor. Read full review
60
NewsweekDavid Ansen
Gangs is a dream project Scorsese has wanted to make for 30 years. You have to honor its mad ambition. But sadly, it feels like a dream too long deferred. Read full review
60
Dallas ObserverBill Gallo
The problem here lies not in the abundance of blood--we've seen that before--but in the film's pounding insistence, which prevails for all two hours and 40 minutes, that we also absorb a rather thin and unreliable history lesson. Read full review
60
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
Cost well over $100 million, and the money is up there for the gawking. Illuminated by the orange flames of hell, the vast New York City set looks great. The least engaging aspect of the movie is its script -- which passed through the hands of three separate writers and perhaps even producer Harvey Weinstein. Read full review
60
L.A. WeeklyJohn Powers
Scorsese and his writers have saddled their dream with a corny plot apparently lifted from some old 1930s Warner Bros. film starring Jimmy Cagney and Pat O'Brien. Read full review
60
SalonStephanie Zacharek
"Gunsmoke" meets "Planet of the Apes" in Martin Scorsese's overlarge, overcooked epic of 19th century Manhattan. You should see it anyway. Read full review
60
The New YorkerDavid Denby
The movie is strange and muddled -- a disorganized epic -- but Day-Lewis, disporting himself with royal assurance, does what he can to hold it together. [23 & 30 December 2002, p. 166]
60
The New RepublicStanley Kauffmann
The flaw that separates Scorsese's film into its components is its lack of a crystallized theme. Read full review
50
Washington PostStephen Hunter
Under its scope and reach and passion, Gangs of New York is pretty ordinary stuff. Read full review
50
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
Epic, meticulously researched and ultimately disappointing, Martin Scorsese's bloody valentine to the birth of his beloved city is less than the sum of its parts. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
Starts off with a lot of promise and excitement but winds up 165 minutes later feeling empty and affectless. Read full review
50
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
An elaborately worked-over opus that's as tarted-up and artificial as Scorsese's '70s classic Mean Streets was gritty and real, Gangs of New York feels like a movie musical without the songs. Read full review
40
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
Scorsese and his team have created a heavy-footed golem of a motion picture, hard to ignore as it throws its weight around but fatally lacking in anything resembling soul. Read full review
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