Metacritic reviews

Gangs of New York is something better than perfect: It's thrillingly alive.

Everything is vast and hugely ambitious in Martin Scorsese's magisterial, scrambled historical epic.

If Martin Scorsese's staggeringly ambitious one-of-a-kind finally has too many flaws to be great, it has as much greatness in it as any movie this year.

Rips up the postcards of American history and reassembles them into a violent, blood-soaked story of our bare-knuckled past.

The movie turns choppy in the final third, but it is a monumental achievement nonetheless.

Lacks one thing -- an epic grandeur.

There is greatness in Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York: titanic acting, violent poetry, moviemaking on a grand scale, a real air of daring. And there is flab in it as well, and confusion.

Stunning, and it has the added bonus of being about an era that is virtually new to movies. As a dramatic achievement, however, it is not quite so amazing.

While the initial sequence is glorious, the last is a shambles.

Under its scope and reach and passion, Gangs of New York is pretty ordinary stuff.