The Wackness

Martin Scorsese's Oscar nominated epic of 19th century New York stars Leonardo DiCaprio as an Irish-American punk out to avenge the death of his father, and Cameron Diaz as the sassy pickpocket who falls for the wounded, simmering junkyard dog of a street thug. Like a revisionist "Birth of a Nation" for the North, this Civil War story takes place in the urban slums of New York. In the neighborhood known as Five Points, Irish immigrants are second-class citizens and the national chauvinist Natives run the criminal world and Tammany Hall, until the tide turns and Tammany builds its new power base on the huge voting numbers of immigrant Irish. There's an amazing story in there but this hodgepodge of a screenplay, built on the tired and bent spine of revenge, betrayal and clan loyalty, does little to illuminate any of that. But it is sumptuous, a paean to the craftsmanship of Rome's Cinecitta studio (where Scorsese recreated his yesteryear New York) and the designs of Dante Ferretti as captured by cinematographer extraordinaire Michael Ballhaus. Daniel Day-Lewis is incandescent as Bill "the Butcher," a wonderful conundrum of a Native gang leader who dresses like a slum-born's idea of a dandy and swaggers like gutter royalty.

The supplements on this disc -- commentary by the always engaging Scorsese, featurettes on the set design and costume design, a history of the Five Points area in New York, the Discovery Channel documentary "Uncovering the Real Gangs of New York" and a multiangle exploration of the film's grand sets -- are carried over from the 2003 DVD release. But even though there is nothing new to the package, this is the kind of richly visual, densely created film that Blu-ray is made for.