Intriguing, Ben - I quite liked Gangs. Thought it captured the "alien" feel of the past much better than most period films.
I agree. I'm going to provide some minor spoilers, followed by some major ones. Read at your own risk.
That said, Gangs isn't without it's problems. There was definitely some Catholic inaccuracy... like CITH in those catacombs, with a completely fabricated communion prayer (though it was pretty cool pre-battle, nonetheless) "May God put the steel of the Holy Spirit [SPIRIT?!?] in your spine and the love of the Blessed Virgin in your heart" Sounds pretty good when pronounced with a nice Irish lilt, though.
It appears, though from some angles this could be disputed, that the priest in the catacombs was offering mass (or at least the elevation) versus populum... then there's the issue of the movie opening with Liam Neeson saying the St Michael prayer... in 1846 (think about that one for a second).
As far as the scene where it appears characters are receiving CITH, it is odd because there is a later scene where the main Irish characters are quite reverently receiving communion on the tongue.
Then there's the ridiculously campy line of Liam Neeson (in response to DDL's "may the Christian God guide my hand against your roman popery!) of "PREPARE TO RECEIVE THE TRUE LORD!" and then pulls his sword and charges into battle... ugh
Leo's character was not well developed. He throws his bible into the river when he leaves Hellgate. Now, one could say that he did this because Hellgate was obviously a protestant boarding school and it reasons they gave him a protestant bible (this does logically follow) and a self respecting Irish Catholic wouldn't be caught dead with a prot bible, but he was only like seven years old when he went to Hellgate, which raises the question of how he could, for sixteen years, maintain any Catholic sentiment and even KNOW that there were different "versions" of scripture... plus, he sincerely hugs the Reverend when he leaves... and then RIGHT after he throws the bible in the river, he's seen praying the St Michael prayer... I mean, c'mon this is not well thought out.
Then Leo talks about "Always hating the harbor after dark..." how? You've been in a boarding school since you were 7. Were you looting many ferry boats at this age? Or his narrative about all the different kinds of criminals in the five points. We're getting a narrative from someone who DIDN'T grow up in the five points... while he could easily come across this information from the crew he's now running with, this gangster lifestyle-- whatever his propensity could have been to it due to his early childhood and fiery Irish personality-- is largely alien to him. His gangster savvy seems out of place for someone who spent his entire practical life in a protestant boarding school.
And the ending sucks. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The movie does it's best to build up tension between the natives and the Irish, between Catholics and masons/prots/politicians and completely abandons it at the last second for some "unified American" bullsh.
How does the final scene climax? With your two main characters fighting it to the death? NO. They try to, but the canon fire from the navy interrupts, one of them gets shrapeneled and the other finishes him off. THEN Leo is narrating at the end about how many dead there were, and that it didn't matter whether they were rabbits, natives, whatever... it didn't matter? Then what did I just spend the first two hours watching? Then close with U2's "these are the hands that built America..." No thanks.
I LIKE the movie. But some things in it were just wrong.
