| | | America Was Born in the Streets.
Miramax Gangs Of New York (Blu-ray) An epic tale of vengeance and survival, "Gangs Of New York" now hitsharder than ever on Blu-ray Disc(TM). Directed byAcademy Award(R) winner Martin Scorsese (2006, Best Director, "The Departed"), this motion picture event stars two-time Oscar(R) winner Daniel Day-Lewis (1989, Best Actor, "My Left Foot"; 2007, Best Actor, "There Will Be Blood"), Leonardo DiCaprio, and Cameron Diaz. After years of incarceration, Irish immigrant Amsterdam Vallon (DiCaprio) returns to lower Manhattan's lawless, corrupt Five Points section seeking revenge against the rival gang leader (Day-Lewis) who killed his father. But before long, Amsterdam's personal vendetta becomes part of an erupting wave of full-blown gang warfare. Feel your heart pound while weapons and cultures clash in a chaotic symphony of life and death. Surrender to the tumultuous atmosphere of 1860s New York as phenomenal sound and stunning visual clarity transport you back in time. Prepare to experience Scorsese's masterpiece as never before on Blu-ray High Definition.
"Everything is vast and hugely ambitious in Martin Scorsese's magisterial, scrambled historical epic." Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly
"Scorsese creates a film so resonant that it is both a work of great art and an anthropological document." Michael O'Sullivan, The Washington Post
"A magnificent throwback to an almost vanished era of epic filmmaking by great filmmakers in thrall to their own passions..." Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune
"A triumph of pure craft and passionate heart." Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
"...a spacious, robust movie that grabs hold of us and doesn't let go for nearly three hours." Rich Cline, Film Threat
"A grand achievement in history and anthropology, supporting its ambition and scope with a sumptuous re-creation of the period..." Scott Tobias, The Onion A.V. Club
"A historical epic with the courage of its convictions about both scope and detail." Susan Stark, Detroit News
Editor's Note
Director Martin Scorsese revisits New York City's notorious past with this dazzling historical drama. A throwback to the epics of yesteryear, GANGS OF NEW YORK is set in the mid-1800s, when the streets of lower Manhattan were teeming with tension and violence. Leonardo DiCaprio is Amsterdam Vallon, the son of a revered gang leader (Liam Neeson). As a youth, Amsterdam witnessed the death of his father at the hands of William "The Butcher" Cutting (Daniel Day-Lewis), the maniacally driven ruler of the city's most powerful gang. Sixteen years later, Amsterdam is finally released from the orphanage that raised him. Determined to avenge his father's death, Amsterdam makes his way back to the volatile Five Points to track down Cutting and exact revenge. As he gradually infiltrates Bill the Butcher's camp and earns the crazed gangster's respect, he must also contend with the tumultuous, but beautiful, Jenny Everdean (Cameron Diaz). DiCaprio and Diaz are impressive in their respective roles, but it is Day-Lewis who steals the show. Resurfacing after a five-year retirement, the Irish actor delivers a performance that is at once cartoonish, electrifying, comical, sincere, and deeply moving. By paying tribute to the early days of New York City in such a grand, spectacular manner, Scorsese also pays tribute to cinema itself.
| Features | Discovery Channel Special: Uncovering The Real Gangs Of New York | | Audio: English, French Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound | | Dubbed: French | | Feature Audio Commentary With Martin Scorsese | | Featurettes: Costume Design, Set Design, & History Of The Five Points - Explore The Sets Of Gangs Of New York With Multiple Angles Utilizing 360-Degree Shots Of The Sets | | Interactive Menus | | Music Video: U2's The Hands That Built America | | Scene Selection | | This Is A Blu-Ray DVD Made For Blue-Laser Format Players Which Produce Higher Quality Picture & Sound | | Trailers |
| Technical Info
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Release Information
| | Studio: Buena Vista |
| Release Date: 7/1/2008 |
| Running Time: 166 minutes |
| Original Release Date: 2002 | | Catalog ID: 5703303 | | UPC: 00786936761139 | | Number of Discs: 1 |
Audio & Video
| | Original Language: English | | Available Audio Tracks: English | | Video: Color |
Aspect Ratio | | Widescreen 2.35:1 |
| Cast & Crew
| Awards |
Winner (2003) | | | British Academy Awards, Daniel Day-Lewis, Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role | | | Golden Globe, Martin Scorsese, Best Director - Motion Picture | | | Golden Globe, U2 ("The Hands That Built America"), Best Original Song - Motion Picture | |
Nominee (2003) | | | Oscar, Daniel Day-Lewis, Best Actor in a Leading Role | | | Oscar, Michael Ballhaus, Best Cinematography | | | Oscar, Martin Scorsese, Best Director | | | Oscar, Thelma Schoonmaker, Best Editing | | | Oscar, Bono, et. al. ("The Hands That Built America"), Best Music, Original Song | | | Oscar, Alberto Grimaldi, Harvey Weinstein, Best Picture | | | Oscar, Jay Cocks, et. al., Best Writing, Original Screenplay | | | Oscar, Sandy Powell, Best Costume Design | |
Winner (2003) | | | Screen Actors Guild, Daniel Day-Lewis, Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role |
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| | Professional Reviews | Rolling Stone
"...GANGS OF NEW YORK is something better than perfect: It's thrillingly alive....A triumph of pure craft and passionate heart..." 01/23/2003 p.75New York Times
"...GANGS OF NEW YORK is an important film as well as an entertaining one. With this project, Mr. Scorsese has made his passionate ethnographic sensibility the vehicle of an especially grand ambition..." 12/20/2002 p.E1 USA Today
"...It has as much greatness in it as any movie this year..." 12/20/2002 p.1E Entertainment Weekly
"...The complicated and brilliant Day-Lewis makes all of old New York come alive; he's the furnace that stokes the story, and he gives off real, exciting heat..." 01/03/2003 p.43-4 Variety
"...GANGS OF NEW YORK bears all the earmarks of a magnum opus for Martin Scorsese....A richly impressive and densely realized work..." 12/02/2002 p.38-44 Premiere
"...Unsparing, hallucinatory, spectacular, it's personal moviemaking on an epic scale, a vision that will take your breath away and hold it for the movie's entire running time..." 02/01/2003 p.20 Film Comment
"...GANGS OF NEW YORK may be the last of its kind -- a costume picture made entirely in a studio by a superbly creative director in collaboration with mater craftspeople..." 01/01/2003 p.24-7 Movieline's Hollywood Life
"...Day-Lewis does a superb job of making the villain charismatic and complex..." 02/01/2003 p.62 Uncut
"Big, brilliant, brutal and beautiful." 02/01/2003 p.100 ReelViews 8 of 10
Gangs of New York is a bold, epic spectacle brought to the screen using more of the old-fashioned Hollywood techniques (elaborate sets, large groups of extras) than the new ones (CGI). Visually, it is stunning, and the storyline encompasses a grand scope, using a fascinating and turbulent period of American history as the canvas upon which master cinematic painter Martin Scorsese crafts his images. Yet, despite all of this, Gangs of New York 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...This is inarguably the most ambitious motion picture of his long career, the first time he has attempted a pure epic...We see here the birth pangs of the greatest American city in all of its ugliness. Yet, in presenting such a large tapestry, Scorsese occasionally seems to lose control of the flow. There are times when the movie meanders and the psychological depth of two of the three principal characters falls far below what we have come to expect from the director of the masterworks Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and Goodfellas. Gangs of New York is an example of a production in which the whole is less than the sum of its elements. - James Berardinelli
Chicago Sun-Times 9 of 10
Martin Scorsese's "Gangs of New York" rips up the postcards of American history and reassembles them into a violent, blood-soaked story of our bare-knuckled past. The New York it portrays in the years between the 1840s and the Civil War is, as a character observes, "the forge of hell," in which groups clear space by killing their rivals...All of this is a triumph for Scorsese, and yet I do not think this film is in the first rank of his masterpieces. It is very good but not great. I wrote recently of "GoodFellas" that "the film has the headlong momentum of a storyteller who knows he has a good one to share." I didn't feel that here. Scorsese's films usually leap joyfully onto the screen, the work of a master in command of his craft. Here there seems more struggle, more weight to overcome, more darkness. It is a story that Scorsese has filmed without entirely internalizing. The gangsters in his earlier films are motivated by greed, ego and power; they like nice cars, shoes, suits, dinners, women. They murder as a cost of doing business. The characters in "Gangs of New York" kill because they like to and want to. They are bloodthirsty, and motivated by hate. I think Scorsese liked the heroes of "GoodFellas," "Casino" and "Mean Streets," but I'm not sure he likes this crowd. - Roger Ebert
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