Whenever he returns to the world of crime, Martin Scorsese seems to have more to say on the subject. His crime films just get bigger and bigger. Gangs of New York is one of his biggest, and it looks like both a summation of that strain in his work and a kind of archival project digging into the origins of his concerns.The promotional tag for the movie is “America was born in the streets”, which places Gangs of New York (based on a 1928 non-fiction book) as a movie about history and politics. It is indeed that, but, in my view, it’s less about the birth of a nation than about the way masculinity is constructed — and in Scorsese’s world, that means in gangs, via violence. This movie speaks to other Scorsese films such as Mean Streets and Goodfellas, and is perhaps best seen in relation to them. If the oeuvre of any American director demands to be seen as a whole if one is to understand its constituent parts, it is Scorsese’s. Gangs of New York starts with the declaration that “While the North was invading the South, the Irish invaded New York”. This is the 1860s; the American Civil War is under way. The movie is confined to New York, in some ways above (or, rather, below) the fray, though in other ways — as the ferociously ironic finale indicates — all too embroiled in it.The opening scene is a gang battle in Five Points, the poorest and most crime-ridden part of the city, between Irish immigrants and “native” New Yorkers — ironic, too, in that “native” means they haven’t just stepped off the boat. That battle, filmed with Scorsese’s usual brilliance, sets it all up, especially the revenge drama that will be played out as the movie develops. Leonardo DiCaprio is Amsterdam Vallon, a young Irishman who works his way into the court of lower New York’s gangster overlord, William Cutting, aka Bill the Butcher, played by Daniel Day-Lewis. Amsterdam plots to avenge his father (Liam Neeson), who died at The Butcher’s hands; at the same time, he develops something of a father-son relationship with The Butcher himself.This story takes some time to unfold. Some two and a half hours, in fact. Exhaustion notwithstanding, I felt that the movie needed to be at least half an hour longer. Conflict between Scorsese and producer Harvey Weinstein, over costs and length, dogged the making of the film; they kissed and made up later, and each declared himself happy with the final product, but it is apparent that Scorsese didn’t quite make the film he would have made without the pressure of commerce. The first two thirds of the film unfolds at a deliberate pace, lingering beautifully and effectively on every detail; then, in its last hour, it appears suddenly to feel time’s wingèd chariot at its back and it speeds up, cutting fast (too fast) between scenes, straining to get it all in and round it all off.The narrative seems to have got bogged down in its magnificent setting, and that makes Gangs of New York something less than the chef d’oeuvre Scorsese may have intended. It is, however, still a magisterial work. This obscure but compelling world is (re)created with obsessive attention to detail. Whether the movie is historically accurate is another matter — it seems that Scorsese has put a phantasmagoric twist of his own on the milieu, but it works.The style pushes the movie toward the folkloric or the legendary, making its relation to history ambiguous (it was, after all, shot at Fellini’s old fantasy factory, Cinecittá), but every detail, from the settings to the costumes to the slang, adds to the whole. Scorsese has created an alien world as self-enclosed as that of The Lord of the Rings, and as compelling. Naturally, he’s not seduced into any simple good-versus-evil opposition, and the film is all the richer for it. Bill the Butcher is clearly the central character, the person around whom it all turns, though he is seen largely through Amsterdam’s eyes. He is as fascinatingly repellent (and as terrifying) as the Joe Pesci character in Goodfellas, and Day-Lewis gives a deeply convincing performance, despite the fact that at times he seems to be playing Robert DeNiro playing The Butcher. (A hint that Scorsese’s first choice for the role may well have been DeNiro?) Scorsese is obviously drawn to the exploration of such figures, and he does it masterfully, never losing touch with the character’s humanity, whatever his evil deeds.Gangs of New York is even more gruesome than other Scorsese pictures. Violence is the very crucible of history; for Scorsese, perhaps more importantly, or by extension, it is formative of masculinity. And the violence is always ugly — even when filmed with the sweeping, dazzling grandiosity of Scorsese’s mature style. (Over and above the violence, it’s pleasing that there’s still at least one director of the “why cut when you can pan?” school.) Few directors in the United States could have filled so large a canvas — from the broad strokes to the most delicate textures. Just don’t expect Gangs of New York to restore your faith in humanity.