Any film that's taken as long to reach an audience as Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York, which was shot early last year on expensive sets at Rome's Cinecitta, will draw suspicion that there's something to hide. Stories of a serious fall out between the director and Miramax head Harvey Weinstein over continued spending have been well rehearsed in the press, with the reporting of the laying off of part of the editing team in the New York Post on the one hand and Weinstein's smoke screen love letter to Marty published in the Guardian on the other. Rumours abound as to the causes of the delay, some of which may even be true-that the screenplay was too sketchy when shooting started, that the film contains negative depictions of New York's police and fire departments which were felt to be inappropriate in the aftermath of 9/11, that Scorsese wanted some reshoots which Miramax was resisting. Whatever the real story, some clarification was hoped for from the 20-minute segment screened during a Scorsese tribute to Billy Wilder at Cannes.

The event was clouded in paranoia. Convinced it would be mobbed, Miramax tried and failed to fast track certain American journalists into a screening by a back door, only to find that critics could access the screening straight up the red carpet without any problem. Then the stars arrived- Leonardo DiCaprio, Cameron Diaz, Sharon Stone, Juliette Binoche- and held to their tight poise. The tribute to Wilder was little better than perfunctory, marred by terrible video projection. But then came the 20 minutes we'd been waiting for.

What we got was a slick trailer, indistinguishable it would seem from what the trade calls the "distributors'reel", a longer promo routinely put together for cinema-chain owners. The historical background to the moment - the1860's in Five Points New York - was sketched in with the accent on violence. A wooden door is kicked open onto the frozen expanse of the Five Points, a notorious centre of perdition in Victorian age New York which according to Dickens, "in respect of filth and wretchedness may safely be backed against Seven Dials", London's equivalent. This was the home of numerous gangs - the Dead Rabbits the Daybreak Boys, the Swamp Angels, the Shirt Tails, the Plug-Uglies, the NightWalkers, and the True Blues - described in Herbert Asbury's book "The Gangs of New York". Here we see an instant battle between protestant Nativists, a thug collection of English, Dutch, Welsh and German stock led by William Cutter, `Bill the Butcher' (Daniel Day Lewis), and the newly arrived Catholic Irish, led by Priest Vallon (Liam Neeson). Cutter kills Vallon and exiles his baby son to be brought up in a home for destitutes. The son grows up to be Amsterdam Vallon (DiCaprio), who returns to Five Points, where Cutter now controls all the Gangs, with vengeance in his heart.

A great deal of bellowing and knife throwing from Day-Lewis, deep into a fine De Niro impersonation, blows DiCaprio off the screen everytime they're together. We get a sense of how vivid and spectacular a world the money has been spent on, and the lasting impression is about half-and-half between a really great Martin Scorsese movie and 'Titanic' revisited. Why is that? For one thing the music sounds like generic trailer music with an accent on the Bodhran and pipes (one suspects the real film's music will be more subtle), while the film didn't seem to be edited like a Scorsese movie. It looked and felt like a Miramax marketing job only the usual `another time another place` gravely voiceover was missing.

I was left wondering what the point of it all was. Was Miramax trying to repeat the success of a similar 20 minute taster for `Lord of the Rings' given the press at last years Cannes? If so,then why involve the public? Was it trying to put on a show of solidarity? If so for whom? For myself, if it did the job of whetting my appetite further, but I was already eager. Despite the weakness of some recent films, Scorsese remains the touchstone director of our time. Furthermore, Asbury's book was influential among friends of mine in the 1970's scene in London: we had a band called the Swamp Angels and a clothing label called Dead Rabbits. So `Gangs of New York' had me at hello, trailer or not. And it was worth it to see Harvey Weinstein shoot to his feet for Scorsese, prompting a standing ovation.

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