SUN SCORE

**1/2

When a director as gifted as Martin Scorsese works with talented craftsmen on an enormous scale, the size of his ambition alone can catalyze a hypnotic effect. This aesthetic X-factor - the X stands for artful extravagance - keeps you watching Gangs of New York even if you don't buy a minute of it.

Based on Herbert Asbury's 1928 historical catalog of the toughs and tarts who reigned in pre-World War I New York, Scorsese's picture is a fantastic urban spectacle that wants to be an operatic epic. Unfortunately, it lacks emotional lift or folkloric fervor.

Jay Cocks, who wrote the story and shares credit on the screenplay with Steven Zaillian and Kenneth Lonergan, hit on a sturdy, clever design. The script hinges on the explosive intersection of immigrant tribalism and the politics of a burgeoning metropolis. From Asbury, Cocks takes a powerful character called Bill the Butcher (Daniel Day-Lewis) and makes him stand for every grassroots American demagogue of the mid-19th century who fought for turf against "foreigners." Called Bill Cutting in the movie (in Asbury's book Bill Poole), he's the leader of the Nativists - people born and bred in the lawless Five Points neighborhood on Manhattan's Lower East Side.

In the opening sequence, Bill and his Nativist Army square off against the Irish gang known as the Dead Rabbits. Bill kills their leader, Priest Vallon (Liam Neeson), in full view of Priest's son, and quashes any threat to the Nativists' rule. The bulk of the movie takes place 16 years later, in 1863. Priest's son, Amsterdam Vallon (Leonardo DiCaprio), emerges from reform school intent on revenge. Without revealing his true identity, Amsterdam becomes part of Bill's team - and wavers in his focus when he sees Bill honor Priest Vallon's memory as a worthy opponent.

Now one of New York's most important men, Bill is a street-regal roughneck who supplies muscle for the Tammany Hall machine of Boss Tweed (Jim Broadbent). Still, we know that neither Priest's son, Amsterdam, nor his killer, Bill, will let Dead Rabbits lie. And bubbling in the background is the greater racial and political chaos of the 1860s. It soon explodes into an underclass revolt against conscription policies that snags able-bodied men straight off the boat, yet allows wealthy individuals to buy their way out of service.

Scorsese wants to generate increasing momentum and power on a series of tests and challenges between Amsterdam and Bill, culminating in the revival of Irish-American gang life. The director never gets up to full steam. Even the pitched combat at the beginning is a gamble that doesn't pay off.

Scorsese and company fill the preparation with piquant ingredients: Cocks hands Priest a memorable signature line, "the blood always stays on the blade." Irish warriors arm themselves tooth and nail and make a religious procession through a catacomb-like interior. In a terrific iconoclastic stroke, they move outdoors, and you realize you're in 1846 New York. The first view of Bill and his Nativists emerging from a skeletal house in gutter formal wear - red-striped pants, belts made of bunting, and towering stovepipe hats - is a wonderful, gaudy surprise.

But the battle itself is befuddling. Of course, there's an innate horror to hordes fighting to the death with gruesome spikes attached to boots or gloves, as well as the usual knives, cleavers, axes and shillelaghs. Yet the sequence works only as a brutal-baroque show of force.

Scorsese's heart may be with the Irish, but his temperament has mellowed since Mean Streets and Taxi Driver. He doesn't stage, shoot and edit the slaughter to exact maximum adrenaline and compel an audience to face its own battle lust. And he doesn't manage to achieve a stylized, choreographic flow to the blows and counter-blows. All that builds is the body count. What's worse, when Neeson dies, the hope of a worthy antagonist for Day-Lewis dies with him

Day-Lewis' maniacal glare bounces off Neeson's implacable facade. Their acting duel keeps you focused on the drama rather than on the marvelous historical background. But calling on DiCaprio to take Neeson's place is like drafting a boy straight off the boat, even if DiCaprio's boat was called Titanic.

It's tempting to blame the script for the dramatic imbalance between Amsterdam and Bill. Actually, Amsterdam would be a plum role for a hungry actor; it's full of simmering emotion and seductive duplicity. With much less to work with, for example, Henry Thomas, as Amsterdam's eager yet inchoate friend John, has more fire in his eyes. Indeed, John's crush on Jenny Everdeane (Cameron Diaz), a thief with an ambiguous connection to Bill, carries more weight than Amsterdam's consummated love for her. DiCaprio plays Amsterdam too passively to be Bill's ultimate antagonist. Your allegiance shifts to Brendan Gleeson, a vicious Irish bruiser turned barber (then sheriff) who ignites the film with the authority of a true people's champion, but only for a few minutes.

None of this would matter if Scorsese had conjured an aura of Irish-American and Nativist communal feeling. But you get only hints of it, mostly from the folk music. Walter Hill may not share Scorsese's reputation, but Hill's The Long Riders and Geronimo: An American Legend overflow with the vibrant, enveloping clannishness never attained in Gangs of New York. Without it, Scorsese's movie becomes a collection of glittering fragments.

The period details are eloquent, such as dancing couples sharing candles as they swing and sway in the near-dark. The camera provokes attention with bravura juxtapositions of the hoity-toity and the hoi polloi, and with movements that sweep you up in the surge of immigrants, their forced service to their country and their frustration and wrath. The production design takes your breath away with its evocation of Old New York as Sodom on the Atlantic and Gomorrah on the Hudson.

What holds the movie together is Day-Lewis' audacious portrait of Bill the Butcher. He gives an impression of height so immense he could be walking on stilts. His one good eye appears to provide better vision than the full set of a normal man. He speaks with the flat deliberation of a rough-hewn intelligence, savoring his own words and any new one he comes across, like "ghoul." Day-Lewis doesn't stint on stoking Bill's elemental rage at the Irish overtaking his city. The actor pulls out all stops when Bill demonstrates his skills at cutting meat or tossing knives. But he also injects an oddball humor into his characterization. He knows his own strength; he exults in toying with other people's fear of it.

Yet the keynote of Day-Lewis' performance is an exhausted alertness. His Bill recognizes that he's becoming obsolete. For all the movie's spectacle, its most telling moment arrives when, for the first time, Bill declines a fight. That's when you feel history passing. The title promises Gangs, but the movie mostly delivers on its gang leader.

Gangs of New York

Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz

Directed by Martin Scorsese

Rated R, Released by Miramax

Time 165 minutes