LogFAQs > #976783776

A stunning work of bearing witness that builds to an unforgettable ending that openly challenges the very nature of the preceding three hour film and implicates no less than the entire American viewing public, starting with Scorsese himself.

When people say "Scorsese only makes crime films," they're not altogether wrong. This is basically a prairie mob film. But crime, to Scorsese, is not just about the guns and money. It's about the deep, complicated processes of rationalization, cognitive dissonance, and cynical disavowal that people engage in, at that constant metabolic rate, to justify their own existence. It's about the way we create systems--social, economic, political, psychological--to account for what might be basic cruelty. Not basic to humanity. But fundamental to the project of "America," and the ornately arranged economic structure that undergirds it. A damning film from an elder statesman whose critique--of the world, and of himself--is only getting sharper, meaner, and truer.

a propulsive, yet patient, elegy and apology for capitalism and its inherent brutality and displacement; Martys most violent film