Rating:8/10
The Gangs of New York is quite a captivating story, but an unoriginal tale of revenge such as the Count of Monte Cristo.  This movie is based on the real gangs of New York and some of the characters were based loosely on important people during that time, especially Bill "The Butcher" Cutting, even though most of these characters are fictional.  I will warn you.  This is three hours long, but it is not boring.  Well, sometimes it feels a little too long, but it is three hours long.  Leonardo DiCaprio put in a performance that I actually enjoyed.  I am not a big fan of his.  He is a bit over rated.  But here, Martin Scorsese got quite a bit of mileage from him.  Samething with Cameron Diaz.  Normally you wouldn't see Diaz in anything like this.  She usually stars in some piece of fluff.  But this was quite a challenge for her and it looks as if she took the bull by the horns.  Daniel Day-Lewis was nothing short of amazing.  This guy only does movies once in every three years it seems and he made quite a good choice with this movie.  He was fully into character and was so convincing, it was hard to imagine that Bill Cutting was being played by an actor.  This is one of the best acting jobs in cinema history.  Visually, this film is a masterpiece.  The setting provides a great mixture of the real and the surreal.  The costumes were really cool looking.  The Five Fingers looked so amazing that it looked as if it was a character of it own.  This movie is something that should be watched and has somedecent historical accuracy of what was happeing at the time of the civil war in New York.  Quite a good film.