Curator Watchlist
A grand, unruly historical gangster epic with immense atmosphere, muscular set pieces, and one of Daniel Day-Lewis’s most electrifying performances. It’s messy and overlong, but the scale, production design, and sense of a city being born through violence make it memorable.
Where to watch: Buy
Sat · 2h 48m
Director: Martin Scorsese
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis, Cameron Diaz
In early 1860s New York, Irish immigrant Amsterdam Vallon is released from prison and returns to the Five Points, seeking revenge against his father's killer, William Cutting, a powerful anti-immigrant gang leader. He knows that revenge can only be attained by infiltrating Cutting's inner circle. Vallon's journey becomes a fight for personal survival and to find a place for the Irish people.
Martin Scorsese
Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis, Cameron Diaz
A grand, unruly historical gangster epic with immense atmosphere, muscular set pieces, and one of Daniel Day-Lewis’s most electrifying performances. It’s messy and overlong, but the scale, production design, and sense of a city being born through violence make it memorable.
Gangs of New York is less a cleanly engineered gangster movie than a feverish civic myth: a story about power, immigration, and the brutal making of a city. Scorsese turns the Five Points into a battlefield where politics, ethnicity, and personal revenge all blur together, and the result feels both messy and alive.
The film’s reputation rests heavily on Daniel Day-Lewis, who dominates every scene with a performance that is theatrical in the best sense. Around him, the movie can feel overstuffed and uneven, but the sheer force of its world-building, costumes, and street-level chaos keeps it compelling even when the narrative strains.
It’s not the most elegant Scorsese film, but it is one of the most ambitious. If you respond to historical grit, operatic violence, and the idea of a city as a moral battleground, this is absolutely worth the trip.
maria (3.5★) · 3369 likes
daniel day-lewis has more talent in his fake eye than i do in my entire body
lauren (3.5★) · 3260 likes
i’m no historian but pretty sure there were more than three women alive in 1800s new york, idk i’ve been wrong before
Sam B. (2.5★) · 2295 likes
Honestly cannot believe they ended the film with a fucking U2 song.
rach (3★) · 1924 likes
someone please tell scorsese that it is okay to make a film that is less than 2 hours
Karsten (2.5★) · 1678 likes
Maybe Marvel fans do deserve rights (kidding!!!!)
A stylized period crime drama with big personalities, moral conflict, and a strong sense of civic corruption.
Shares the same appetite for American mythmaking, ruthless ambition, and a towering central performance.
An epic about power, family, and the immigrant experience, with a similarly expansive historical scope.
Essential crime cinema for viewers drawn to generational power struggles and organized violence.
Scorsese’s other hard-edged crime epic, driven by betrayal, identity, and relentless tension.
For viewers who like historical vengeance stories with large-scale battle energy and mythic intensity.
A sweeping historical drama with frontier violence, romance, and a strong sense of place.
Another Scorsese period piece, but more restrained; useful for its precision in depicting social codes and class pressure.
A period drama about fear, power, and social hysteria, with a similar interest in public morality.
Not a gangster film, but comparable in immersive period detail and muscular craftsmanship.
A brooding American myth with violence, legend, and a hauntingly deliberate pace.
A brutal frontier crime story with harsh landscapes, moral rot, and a strong period texture.
immigration, revenge, gang warfare, urban history, power and corruption, identity and belonging, class conflict, political violence
historical crime, gangster epic, period drama, immigrant struggle, revenge thriller, urban decay, operatic violence, 19th century, political corruption