DBWI: Another Yankee-bashing Gibson movie!

Did anyone bother to catch Sir Gibson's latest "historical" movie? Now, I know how the Imperial film conglomerates love to stick it to us with their shoddy anti-American movies (I mean, I still feel pretty dammed :mad: whenever I think about the vile inaccuracies in 1812), but this latest project of his sounds utterly ridiculous!

So, in short, does anyone have any comments about Gangs of New York?
 
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I could count at least five characters who kept slipping back into their Yorkshire accents from the "American" they were doing.
 
Joy. It's a Boss Tweed Story of how "The United States Government" actually "Works". How nice of them to portray our elected governments as a result of a criminal syndicate run by illegal funds. Seriously, that's some seriously screwed up stuff.
 
Apparently he won some credit with many Native American groups with his film Tecumseh (2006) starring Wes Studi, Colin Ferrell and Christian Bale. If anything, while the historical inaccuracies were plentiful, the fact that people forget is that it was only Mel Gibson who could make such a film production work. The fact that they actually had cast members speak in Iroquois for long portions of the film showeed the attention to detail. I'll give him credit for that much. Unfortunately the image of American pioneers being portratyed as "simple-minded" inbred and incestuous syncophants, with American leaders as manipulative aristocrats was truly disturbing....
 
Guys, it's important to bear in mind that these films are made for a fairly unsophisticated audience who mostly don't know or care about the finer points of history. Not every Brit has an Oxbridge degree. For your average George in Sheffield, Sault or Sydney - and that's who pays for the vast majority of tickets - a film needs villains and heroes. Directors don't like to confuse the plot with greyscale. And Gibson is an extreme case of that habit. He really seems to dislike the USA for some reason. Maybe it has something to do with his childhood there? He comes from a pretty ultra-Catholic background IIRC, and much of the US is overwhelmingly Protestant.

Makes you wonder how his popularity will fare if he ever makes that movie about the Flight of the Earls he keeps announcing.
 
One cannot forget the films Gibson directed and produced during the lowest, most depressing period of his life where he was addicted to cocaine and alcohol. His self-funded productions were huge critical and box-office flops and his habits were draining into his finances. No American or British film studios especially his former Pinewood Studios would produce his films or distribute them. Not even the low-budget independent companies would agree to fund or film his projects. Having no money left to film any of his scripts, well not in the grand scale he'd like and having no job opportunities. He moved to the Philippines where he directed and acted for a period of time, in low budget Filipino action films. One could actually argue though, that Gibson's Philippines period was strangely his renaissance period where he eventually gained the popular and critical respect he was craving, quit his habits and eventually made back enough money to fund his largest epic to date "Inquilab Zindabad!" (1995) about the Indian Revolutionary Period (strangely Yanks were in that one as well :confused:) .

If you want to talk about his Yankee-bashing, go no further than Gibson's earlier collaborations with Filipino film hero Fernando Poe Jr. Those films spewed Anti-Americanism, I once counted one of Poe's characters killing over 2 dozen American soldiers and civilians on screen in some of the most gruesome methods possible. :eek: Though Gibson would later progress from these films, these were unashamedly the most violent, borderline racist films I've ever seen. They would always show the Americans in the most unflattering manner, whether they be the sexist racist alcoholic American soldiers who were uncaring and abusive towards their crowded Filipino families (living in dilapidated barrios, of course) or the sleazy sex tourists who frightened the local pinay.

A memorable film in my mind from these early times would be Batas sa Aking Kamay [The Law in My Hands] (1987) starring Fernando Poe Jr where he plays a humble taxi driver who finds out that his youngest daughter has been kidnapped and gang-raped by American soldiers. As the title suggests, he takes the law into his own hands and spends the films duration searching for the bastards and making them pay. In fact, I think this is the exact film where the more than two dozen Americans die by Poe's hands.

Anyway, I think Gibson is very erratic when it comes to his film-making even after his comeback, they can be at times, excellent masterpieces such as "Inquilab Zindabad!"(1995) and at times absolute stinkers like "Paparazzi"(2004). As for his Americaphobia (is that even a word? :eek:), I've also heard rumours of a tough upbringing and childhood in America and violent abuse of family members by locals due to their religious affiliation, so I can sort of understand his feelings towards America.
 
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