I saw the film last night and was puzzled. Isn’t this kind of thing getting a little old? I read some reviews, and everyone raved. I acknowledge that the acting–particularly Dicaprio’s–was compelling. A lot of the repartee was entertaining. But is this movie presenting itself as merely an entertainment, or is it tying to make a larger statement? Are we supposed to look at this movie as a piece of gritty realism or as a symbolic fable? If the former, it fails for all of its implausible plot elements about which we’re supposed to suspend disbelief. If the latter, what’s the point? Is Scorcese really telling us anything we don’t know from a dozen other films like this one?
And in the final frame a rat framed by the golden-domed statehouse in the background? Is he kidding? There’s a subtle symbolic imagination at work in that in that one.
The whole concept is just clumsy. And I’m angry with myself for wasting another night walking the mean streets of Scorcese’s brutish nihilism. This movie is at best a second-rate "Chinatown." Polanski, at least, has some style; Scorcese, by comparison, is just a thug.
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