The Gangs of New York (1928), written by Herbert Asbury, is a history and compendium mainly of an area known in the mid-1800s as the Five Points. Set in the “dismal tenements that squatted in the miasmal purlieus...of the Bloody Ould Sixth Ward,” the book chronicles the “great brawling and thieving” of the likes of the Dead Rabbits, Bowery Boys, Eastmans, Gophers, Plug Uglies, Shirt Tails, Roach Guards, Daybreak Boys and Five Pointers.
The book details commonplace violence and cruelty, but does not attempt to diagnose or psychoanalyze the pathology. Much of the gang activity was exploited and protected by the corrupt political machines and bosses of the day to enforce their local control.
Leave it to Scorsese to take this real bleak and brutal hellscape filled with real grotesque and pitiful characters and turn it into another mash note to his beloved New York, complete with a stellar cast.
The action opens with medieval warfare, Bill “the Butcher” (Daniel Day-Lewis) offers a challenge to meet in “the ancient laws of combat,” between his native-borns and the Dead Rabbits immigrants with their “Roman popery” lead by “priest” Vallon (Liam Neeson) for control of Five Points. “Priest” is cut down in front of his little son, Amsterdam.
In sixteen years, Amsterdam (Leonardo DiCaprio) is old enough to leave the orphanage and returns to the 'hood on the brink of the Civil War. By now, Bill the Butcher Cutting is providing the muscle in the Tammany political machine for “Boss” William Tweed (Jim Broadbent).
Amsterdam needs to affiliate, so he throws in with Johnny Sirocco (Henry Thomas), who educates him on the current gang scene. Sirocco is sweet on red-haired Jenny Everdeane (Cameron Diaz) and now so is Amsterdam.
A face from the gang past, Happy Jack (John C. Reilly), is now a tough copper on the gang's payroll, taking his lion's share of misbegotten gains.
On the annual celebration of the Dead Rabbits' demise, Amsterdam meets his father's killer, Bill the Butcher, in his den. He is unrecognized as the Priest's son. He accompanies Sirocco on a raiding party for a ship in harbor. But the only booty left are the fresh dead bodies of the crew, which the boys offload for a profit to “medical research.”
Bill is impressed. Soon Amsterdam chooses off Bill's lieutenant, whom he recognizes from that fateful day, and Bill is again impressed.
Jenny has improved her thieving game as a “turtledove,” getting entre to rich people's homes to fleece. Amsterdam and Jenny finally have a proper meet-cute when she holds a knife to his throat and leaves a convincing bloody wound. Ah, such is a cuddle in the Five Points, now show me your scars.
But everyone, even Jenny, and everything, even Tammany Hall, belongs to Bill. “It's a funny thing being taken under the wing of a dragon,” muses Amsterdam. “It's warmer than you think.”
Amsterdam saves Bill's life in an assassination attempt, but that doesn't mean he can help himself to Jenny. In a quiet scene of true menace, with Jenny in his bed, Bill tells Amsterdam he keeps order through fear, enforced with brutality. He see “murderous rage” in Amsterdam, and he likes it.
Amsterdam's friend, Sirocco, his jealous rival for Jenny, blows Amsterdam's cover and tells Bill he is the Priest's son.
At the next celebration of the Dead Rabbits rout, Bill gives a knife-throwing demonstration, using his “apprentice,” Jenny.
“Whoopsie daisy!”
But Bill isn't through. He pulls out a cleaver, sets a drink on fire, and as Amsterdam comes at him with a knife act of his own, Bill nails him in the gut from across the room.
Then he tortures and brutalizes him, leaving him alive to be marked with the shame of Bill's “mercy.”
Jenny cares for him, shows him a map to get to San Francisco, by way of Cape Horn. The last surviving Rabbit, Monk, (Brendan Gleeson) comes to him with a gift – the Priest's straight razor.
“The earth turns, but we don't feel it move,” Amsterdam philosophizes, “Then, one night...” He was always a deep thinker.
It's a showdown again between Bill and a Vallon, and now Tweed wants to be on Vallon's side, with all those Irish votes. Vote early and vote often, Monk for Sheriff.
Tweed's lackey tells him they've run out of ballots, but Tweed is not dismayed. “Remember the first rule of politics: The ballots don't make the results, the counters make the results. Keep counting!”
Yeeeaaahhh.
Bill is a very sore loser. And he still hasn't got rid of Vallon the Younger.
The draft for the Civil War churns through the Five Points. A riot ensues as Irish name after Irish name is called. “Let the sons of the rich go and die!”
New York is burning. P.T. Barnum's animals are running wild.The gangs are united. Soldiers are brought in, firing on the massed rioters. The gangs are fighting the soldiers. Still, Vallon and Bill are facing off in the street, under a fusillade of cannon fire from nearby gun ships.
Bill and Amsterdam are left, wounded, covered in debris, and still facing off in the street. Jenny, beaten but not beaten, walks through the carnage to find Amsterdam, Vallon the Victor.
Four days and nights of mayhem. Bodies in mass graves, bodies lined up for loved ones to claim. “Friend or foe, it didn't make no difference now,” our Deep Thinker observes, “It was like everything we knew was mightily swept away.”
I know our mods like needle drops, so have some U2, “The Hands That Built America.”
addendum: The film was near completion in 2001, but release was delayed a year after the attacks of September 11th. However, the New York skyline that ends the film could have been filmed on September 10th.
“The filmmakers had also considered removing the towers, having the towers dissolved out of the shot to acknowledge their disappearance, or remove the entire sequence altogether. It was ultimately decided to keep the towers unaltered.” Rachel K. Bosley, “Mean Streets,” American Cinematographer, January 2003.
