I agree wholeheartedly with the naysayers. I too am a film fan, and a huge Scorcese fan to boot. I don't mind Hollywood's historical fictions, so long as there is an essence of the "real deal" in the film. None of that with this film. The choices for the leads (with the exception of a few excellent Irish actors like Liam Neeson, Daniel Day Lewis, etc.) was an abomination. Imagine Colin Farrell in Leonardo di Caprio's role for just a minute, and it becomes plain as day that Scorcese is certainly not above stereotyping the ethnics Hollywood style, purely for box office appeal.

I looked up the box office info, BTW. Production budget (which doesn't include advertising, promotional expenses, etc which add about a quarter of the cost of the production budget nowadays for a film like this) was $93,000,000. Total US gross to date has not yet hit $75,000,000.

Just a really, really bad film with some decent production values (ie I liked the art direction, but I didn't LOVE the art direction) which may, with U2 doing the film's Top 40 song, snag an Oscar for that. But I wouldn't bet on Scorcese winning it for director for this film. It really is just too much of a stinker, even by superficial HOllywood standards, for people to hold their nose and vote for him.

He is going to have to do a whole lot better than this to get the gong now.