Family is important, but I already knew that.Kids are stupid. Knew that too. There has to be more to it. Tell me something I don't know, Hollywood!
There is something wrong with the team that thought it would be a good idea to make a Robert Crais novel into a movie. Crais' novels are so light that you have to close the book every few minutes to keep the words from floating off the page*. His guilty and grief-stricken heroes have been published in every cop thriller since the genre was invented. John Maclane versus the Crow. The Columbine killers go to LA. I like Robert Crais, he's like a chewable toothbrush after a heavy meal. No nutritional value, doesn't taste all that good, probably doesn't do you any good, really, but it's something to do.
NOTES ON GANGS OF NEW YORK
Scorcese doesn't many movies anymore because he has no good scripts, no ideas. Gangs of NY is nothing new except the setting. The violence is a little unsettling, but not really unsettling. The characters are so unsympathetic you don't really care who dies as long as Bill Cuddy dies with them because Day Lewis was good, I'll give him that. Real menace, real anger. DiCaprio, as always, is overrated. Brooding stares and weepy rage are a teenager's idea of a good performance, not mine.
So you tell a story in film that has not been told before (to my knowledge), but only for that reason, not because it was worth telling. Nice set, nice costumes, nothing else to see here. Oh, and there is something wrong when Boss Tweed is a film's most likable character.
*stolen
