Well, Rob did warn me when I watched Last of the Mohicans last year (already? I was going to say just) that this film was, in his words, ponderous and pointless and that he regretted watching it. Well, now I share that regret with him. I bought this last February with a gift card at Vintage Stock, and it looks like I’ve watched most of the films I bought that day, including:
- Commando
- Against All Odds
- The Bruce Lee boxed set, which included The Big Boss, Fist of Fury, Way of the Dragon, Game of Death, and Game of Death II
- Deadpool
- The Man with Two Brains
That leaves This Is The End as the only remaining film from that purchase that I have yet to see, so I guess I know what I will watch next.
At any rate, Daniel Day-Lewis won an Oscar for his Sean Connery imitation in this film where he portrays a prospector/miner turned oil man who is led to a rich oil property in California. He has adopted the baby boy of a worker killed in a drilling accident, and he uses the boy as a prop when negotiating with families who own land he wants to buy or lease or investors. A series of setbacks and accidents occur, and he butts heads with a charismatic clergyman member of the Sunday family who for some unfathomable reason is the twin brother of the young man who told him where to find the oil in California. The young boy is deafened in an accident, sets fire to the house and gets sent to a school for the deaf in San Francisco, a man shows up claiming to be the oil man’s half brother and becomes his assistant until he reveals that he is not.
Things happen in the movie, but it rather lacks a narrative, really. It’s more of a Movie that you look at. Shots that linger for several beats too long. A hella lotta half-lit chiaroscuro closeups. Time jumps. The very last bit of the movie takes place many years after the main story just so that the main character can alienate the son and then kill the charismatic clergyman. None of the main characters are really good people or worth rooting for. Ponderous and pointless indeed, and suddenly I’m not that interested in acquiring and watching The Gangs of New York.
Not something I’m going to watch again, but now I have it on DVD for my estate sale, presuming that anyone still has a working DVD player when I shuffle off the mortal lacuna coil.
Gangs of New York was not as bad as There Will Be Blood. It at least had some sort of plot.
Hard to imagine they could unimprove an Upton Sinclair work, but they did.
It’s not so much as I didn’t know where it was going so much as getting to the end and wondering how and why it got there at all.
Also, let it be noted that Daniel Day-Lewis did not accurately capture a Wisconsin accent.