3. Gangs Of New York
Martin Scorsese, 2002.
US

Martin Scorsese’s foray into the world of the historical epic, and a film semi-derided upon it’s initial release is still my chronological favourite Scorsese since Goodfellas. Released just weeks after a very different piece of epic cinema, The Two Towers, Gangs of New York showed that the auteur could provide a wholly similar product to the spectacle-endowed blockbuster filmmaker, while maintaining the thematic and tonal traits one would expect from “A Martin Scorsese Picture”.

If Daniel Day-Lewis’ Bill the Butcher provides the films bounding chassis, representing the frame of his beloved America, then it is Leonardo DiCaprio’s underappreciated Amsterdam Vallon that brings the pulse, indeed the mobile force of change into the equation of a land being reborn. The justifiability of second generation immigration could be interpreted very differently seven years on from its initial release, in a world controlled by paranoia and fear of the usual, which appears to be one of the most dominant themes of the past decade.