Gangs of New York [Remastered] – Blu-ray Disc Review

February 9, 2010 – 5:13 AM - Posted by: Justin Sluss

Tags: Brendan Gleeson, Cameron Diaz, Cian McCormack, Daniel Day-Lewis, Disney, Henry Thomas, Jim Broadbent, John C. Reilly, Leonardo Dicaprio, Liam Neeson, Martin Scorsese, Miramax, Touchstone

has an average rating of 7.4 on IMDb
1080p in AVC MPEG-4 on a 50gb disc
DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio
are just DVD ports but still worthwhile
–
– 2002
– 166 minutes
– Miramax (Disney)
–
This uses 33.5GB for the movie out of 38.6GB total.

Overall Verdict – Finally Worth Recommending

Buy it for $25.99 @ Amazon.com

— Review written by: Justin Sluss —

The Movie Itself was directed by the legendary Martin Scorsese of “Raging Bull“, “Taxi Driver” & “Goodfellas” fame. The story was based on actual events that occurred during the late 1800′s in the city of New York here in the United States of America. The screenplay was written (adapted) by Jay Cocks, Steven Zaillian and Kenneth Lonergan.

The film may be based on true historical events but it does borrow some creative licensing to a degree as the film itself centers around the story from the perspective of a young man named “Amersdam Vallon” who we see at a young age (at this point played by Cian McCormack) in the opening of the film watching his father “The Priest Vallon” (played by Liam Neeson) prepare for a gang battle for “The Five Points” area of New York. This part of town is fought for by many rival gangs, our lead character’s father’s gang is an Irish gang called “The Dead Rabbits” and their main rival gang is a group of American “Natives” that are against the immigrants being in their country. This rival gang is led by a man called “Bill The Butcher” (played brilliantly by Daniel Day-Lewis).

As mentioned above, the opening of the film starts up and leads up to this big gang battle right smack dab in the middle of late 1800′s New York battling for “The Five Points” area. It is in no way a spoiler to tell you this, as it is very vital to the plot, but our lead character’s father “The Priest” is murdered right before his eyes by “Bill The Butcher” and they claim the victory. It’s from this that we see the boy run off and to which lands him in a religious home for orphans for his early childhood years up to his what appears late teens or early twenties (now played by Leonardo Dicaprio). It is many years later when he returns to “The Five Points” seeking revenge for his father’s death.

In closing, looking back on “Gangs of New York” now 8 years later, it was definitely one of Scorsese‘s great films, especially out of his recent films but is certainly not one of his most popular films by any means. As my co-writer Brendan Surpless so boldly put it in his synopsis for our review of another Scorsese film (“Goodfellas“):

Scorsese is a fabulous director, simply put. His legacy of films, from 1970’s “Taxi Driver” to 2004’s “Aviator” all are special and unique in their own manners.

Every bit of that I agree with and feel to be absolutely true. Now you have his 2000 – 2010 decade of works, with “Aviator” which Brendan mentioned above as well as “The Departed” which is actually one of his more popular recent films and also included Leonardo Dicaprio in the cast like this film and “The Aviator.” Scorsese hasn’t stopped making good movies yet either, it’s now February of 2010 and he is about to have a new film hitting theaters soon with Paramount called “Shutter Island” also starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Marty himself admits that he loves history, I guess that’s why if you check his IMDb page under Director he’s set on to do an untitled (as of now) documentary on the late George Harrison (of “The Beatles” fame) as well as likely bio-pics of the late great Frank Sinatra and even the late President Theodore Roosevelt. It’s good to see him making more films that really show us a glimpse in to the past like “Gangs of New York” is the real point that I am trying to drive home here.

The film itself (“Gangs“) includes some other good supporting roles from Cameron Diaz as “Jenny Everdeane“, John C. Reilly as “Happy Jack Mulraney“, Brendan Gleeson as “Walter ‘Monk’ McGinn” and Jim Broadbent as the less than admirable “William ‘Boss’ Tweed.”

Video Quality on this release is in full 1080p using the AVC MPEG-4 codec on a BD-50 (50 gigabyte dual-layered Blu-ray Disc) in the 2.35:1 aspect ratio. DISCLAIMER: As my co-writer James Segars mentioned in his original review for this (found HERE) when it was released a little over a year or so ago, it was literally “butchered” (pun sadly not intended) by the folks that handled the transfer to Hi-Def. That transfer was ridiculed by Blu-ray review sites other than our own, in fact it was pretty much the laughing stock of titles out on the format, only second to “Robocop” from MGM (FOX) which is from the 80′s and let’s face it was never going to look too great. Now this, “Gangs of New York” on the other hand a 2002 film had real potential to look much, much better than it did on that previous Blu-ray release so it really comes as a sigh of relief to tell you that this new “Digitally Re-Mastered” version fixes all of the problems with EE (Edge Enhancement) and so forth, plus just looks much better period even to the casual Hi-Def viewer (average consumer). Since this is the rare occasion the first version of a film is so horrible they have to re-release it (like “The Fifth Element” was for Sony), I’ll be doing Restoration versus Original screenshot comparisons below. For clarification purposes, images on the LEFT are from the Restoration and images on the RIGHT are from the the Original release.

The amount of detail is pretty decent here unlike the previous Blu-ray release which felt more like a DVD up-converted. This on the other hand actually holds some detail, especially in close-ups. The black level is perfectly solid, the fleshtones are accurate and the color palette is vibrant at times, despite the dim dismal conditions of the late 1800′s New York setting around “The Five Points“. I’d also like to add that the beautiful cinematography done by DP (Director of Photography) Michael Ballhaus is finally done some justice which is what I think was so upsetting about the horrible previous release’s video quality.

Overall the presentation here is something to actually consider a Hi-Def presentation and scores a much higher, solid “4 Star Rating” for overall video quality and I’ll admit I almost considered giving it a bit higher rating but settled on that. Still, it is not a 100% perfect Hi-Def transfer or presentation but it is definitely one hell of an improvement over the video quality found on the previous Blu-ray release of the film. Speaking of which, for those of you who unfortunately bought the previous Blu-ray release, I’m assuming maybe that Disney will have the heart at some point to have a trade-in or replacement program or something similar to what they did for “Pirates of the Caribbean“.

Audio Quality on this release is presented in DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio. The previous Blu-ray release of “Gangs of New York” included Uncompressed Linear PCM 5.1 Surround, this time around the studio opted for a DTS-HD MA lossless codec which works just as well. The film relies heavily on the dialogue, which is delivered very distinctly through the front center channel speaker. The film’s original music by composer Howard Shore sounds great with good rear channel presence and LFE. The amount of dynamic range here is pretty impressive at times, sound effects such as those during the two epic battles in the film sound realistic and totally get the job done. There’s no real complaints here from me on the sound mix; unlike my co-writer James Segars in his audio quality portion of his review of the original Blu-ray release (found HERE). To me all those problems with the volume peaking and being hard on your ears seems to really have been fixed. I can’t attribute that to it being in DTS-HD MA but I can attribute it to being likely remixed. This time around “Gangs of New York” earns a more respectively solid “4 Star Rating” for overall audio quality.

Bonus materials are presented in Standard Definition (480i) video with Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo sound @192kbps.

• “History of the Five Points” (13:33)
• “Set Design” (9:12)
• “Exploring the Sets of Gangs of New York” (22:31)
• “Costume Design” (8:00)
• “Discovery Channel Special: Uncovering the Real Gangs of New York” (35:09)
• “U2 Music Video The Hands That Built America” (4:39)
• Audio Commentary with Director Martin Scorsese
• Theatrical Trailer (2:30)
• Teaser Trailer (2:31)

Overall, the bonus materials are just Standard Definition DVD ports but they prove to run pretty lengthy and are VERY informative. Plus, we actually get an audio commentary by the man himself Martin Scorsese which is a definite treat to listen to. It’s a shame we don’t see more audio commentaries from Marty on his films’ home video releases. I think fans will be pleased with the amount of supplemental material found here but I will admit there are no new additions or anything exclusive. Still, the bonus materials do total in roughly around an hour and a half in length so there’s enough to keep you busy for a while after this almost 3 hour epic film.

Blu-ray Disc packaging:

Screenshots:

NOTE: The full-sized 1920×1080 files are in a .PNG file format and uncompressed. Bare with the slow loading times, keep in mind these files are at least 1MB (1 megabyte) in size each.

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