Goofs for
Gangs of New York (2002) More at IMDbPro »

• Continuity: When Amsterdam meets Johnny for the first time after coming back, they walk along the street and stop. As they talk, Amsterdam's satchel repeatedly moves from over his shoulder to under his arm and back between shots.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Bill the Butcher talks to Boss Tweed on the docks as the Irish come off the ships, his words don't match his lip movements.
  
  
• Continuity: When Amsterdam is preparing for the final fight at the end of the film, his Saint Michael medal is wrapped around his hand and positioned on the front of his knuckles. Afterwards as he continues to gear up we see him take the medal and then wrap it around his hand.
  
  

• Anachronisms: Prior to the street battle in 1846, Priest Vallon recites a portion of the Prayer to St. Michael: "St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle! Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil." The prayer was written by Pope Leo XIII in 1888.
  
  
• Continuity: When Amsterdam follows Jenny uptown when she's posing as the maid and he confronts her outside, the blood on his neck from her knife changes drastically between shots.
  
  
• Continuity: The scar on Amsterdam's face from Bill the Butcher's sword disappears and reappears throughout the film.
  
  
• Continuity: When Amsterdam is at the pagoda preparing to kill Bill the Butcher, he is shown with his hands behind his back holding his hat which conceals his knife. In the next shot we see him removing his hat with the rest of the crowd as Bill calls the crowd to attention.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the mob throws rocks at the police, a heavy-looking rock bounces off one officers heads, then bounces around as it hits the ground, as if it weighs nothing at all.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Amsterdam shows Jenny his scars on the pier, several makeup effects lift up off of his skin.
  
  
• Continuity: After Jenny fights of her two attackers in the harbor, after shooting the woman, she pulls herself up on a crate. In the next shot, she is crawling toward the crate on hands and knees.
  
  
• Anachronisms: Bananas were available in the United States after the Civil War, not during it.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Crystal eye balls are fixed and always look to the front without moving. However, the Butcher's eye moves accordingly to his good eye, revealing that it is in fact a contact lens.
  
  
• Continuity: The amount of blood and dirt on Amsterdam's face and clothes changes drastically between shots at the end of the movie.
  
  
• Continuity: Amsterdam's position at the bar after he fights the bald guy alternates between standing up straight and being hunched over.
  
  
• Continuity: When the young Amsterdam throws the knife in the hole, it isn't wrapped. When he returns 16 years later, it is wrapped in old clothes.
  
  
• Continuity: When Bill the Butcher confronts the newly elected Monk, Monk's cudgel switches from being securely tethered to his right hand to loosely held in his left
  
  
• Continuity: Amsterdam wipes blood from the wrong side of his neck as he and Jenny walk down the street after the scene where she had a knife to his neck.
  
  
• Continuity: About 30 minutes into the film, when Amsterdam is conspiring with the Chinese men to murder Bill the Butcher, he shows them a sheet of paper. When he shows it to them the second time, Amsterdam hands the Chinese man an unfolded sheet of paper, but in the next shot, the sheet is folded, and the Chinese man must unfold it.
  
  
• Continuity: When Amsterdam is fighting the bald guy in the bar, men begin to pull him off, then Bill calls for them to break up the fight. The men approach Amsterdam and pull him off again.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Amsterdam is on the table at the Pagoda and Bill The Butcher throws the cleaver in the air, the cleaver is spinning the wrong way to land and stick in the table, yet it does exactly that.
  
  
• Continuity: When Amsterdam is placed on the table, at the pagoda, Bill the Butcher straddles his chest and pounds a cleaver in the tabletop to the left of Amsterdam's head. With the cleaver still stuck in the table, Bill takes another cleaver from his belt and tosses it in the air. As the cleaver descends toward the table, the first cleaver has disappeared and the new cleaver lands in the original cleaver's place.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: After the assassination attempt on Bill the Butcher at the theater, Amsterdam rolls around the floor with the assassin. Amsterdam has a knife in his hand; as he touches the blade to the floor, the blade bends sharply to the side. It is obviously a rubber blade.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Bill the Butcher throws his hatchet into Monk's back, the prop bounced off the actor in the lower left corner of the screen. As Monk falls forward, the hatchet is buried in his back.
  
  
• Continuity: After Amsterdam stops Bill the Butcher's would-be-assassin they struggle on the floor. In the wide shot, the assassin's right hand is empty and lying across his stomach. In the next shot, his hand is lying across Amsterdam and has a pistol in it.
  
  
• Continuity: When the Butcher is back on his feet after being shot in the theater, the blood stain is very different from the one that emerged as he was shot and crouched down. For example, his right lapel is now clean, but it was hit by blood earlier.
  
  
• Continuity: During the fight at the beginning of the movie, bright red blood is all over the snow. By the end of the sequence, the snow is gone.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The troops that are sent to quell the riot level their rifles on the command 'Present Arms.' In this time period, 'Present Arms' was a salute and 'Aim' was the proper command for aiming rifles in battle. Also, as the troops approach the mob, they halt before the word 'halt' is spoken. Troops in the era would march until the word is spoken; they do not stop in anticipation of the command.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: As we enter Satan's Circus, an elderly woman is clearly pretending to sew. The needle never enters the cloth; she just waves it up and down with the thread fluttering after it.
  
  
• Anachronisms: Pink latex balloons decorate the scaffolding at the hanging. After Charles Goodyear's patent for vulcanization in 1843, some toy balloons were made from India Rubber spread thin in a solution of benzol or coal-naphtha, like the preparation used to waterproof raincoats and galoshes, and then vulcanized; they were thick, more like today's balls or the tough inflated pig bladders used in games before. The latex toy balloon was invented in 1931 by Neil E. Tillotson of Colebrook, New Hampshire. The originals were white or black; colored balloons came along even later, when dyes that would not dissolve the latex were developed.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In the very beginning before the great battle of 1846, Priest talks to his young son about St. Michael. When Priest says "and what did he do," the boy who plays young Amsterdam mouths the words.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When the rich folk are playing snooker, the remaining balls on the table are blue, pink, and black. The blue ball didn't exist in snooker until the early part of the 20th century.
  
  
• Continuity: At the hanging, when the condemned man at left of screen is calling to his son and delivering his last words, all four men already have nooses around their necks. After he ends his speech and the hood is pulled down over his face, the nooses are dangling free in front of the other three men, and the hangman places the nooses back on their necks.
  
  
• Errors in geography: When Bill The Butcher tells Boss Tweed about the streets that make up the Five Points, he names five. There were only three; two continuing through and one ending. Little Water and Mulberry Streets were nearby, but not at the intersection itself.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: The movie refers to Anthony, Orange and Cross Streets as being at the Five Points. By the time the events in the movie take place, they had been renamed Worth, Baxter and Park streets, respectively. The city of New York renamed these streets in an effort to change the overall reputation of what was already called Five Points. This strategy failed as the entire area was still as infamous as ever. Most Five Points residents would have still known and referred to the streets by their original names.
  
  
• Anachronisms: Johnny tells Amsterdam that Bendrick the Cockroach "carries a germ" and "if you try to leave the gang, they say, he hacks up blood on you." The link between germs and disease wasn't known until after Robert Koch's 1876 publication. Louis Pasteur's work, also published in the 1870s, completed the proof to the medical community, though it was called "the germ theory of disease" as late as 1914. In the 1860s, no ragamuffin street kid would have made the connection. He wouldn't have used the word that way, either; the first recorded use outside medical literature is John Tyndall's 1879 Fragments of Science for Unscientific People. Until then, "germ" was the part of a seed from which the plant sprouts.
  
  
• Continuity: In the beginning of the film, Priest cuts his face with a razor. The cut moves from the right side to the left.
  
  
• Continuity: After Amsterdam shoots the assassin, he drops his knife in the wide shot, and it tumbles away. In the next shot, when Amsterdam crawls away with the pistol, the knife is back in his hand, and he drops it again.
  
  
• Factual errors: The pistols and revolvers in the movie are of the standard 'cap and ball' variety, but they are not armed with primer caps, without which they cannot be fired.
  
  
• Continuity: During the opening battle scene, just before Bill walks out, trees can be seen in the background. These trees subsequently disappear a few minutes later when the shot cranes up after the battle.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The hammer dulcimer (string instrument old man is playing) shown just before the fight scene between Amsterdam and McGloin, is of a modern design. Instruments from the time would have been much more cumbersome in design as they would have been homemade, or built by carpenters used to working with furniture.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When the draft board comes calling, the gang member pretends not to understand English and says, in his best Irish Gaelic, "Nil moran Gaeilge agam" which means "I don't understand Irish very well". What he meant to say was "Nil moran Bearla agam" which means "I don't understand English very well.
  
  
• Continuity: After the elections, when the Butcher goes to face Monk McGinn, McGinn's infamous notched club switches hands between cuts, even though the leather strap is tight around his wrist.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When the competing fire companies arrive at the house fire, one fireman is wearing modern-day fireman's pants. He may be an actual firefighter taking part in the scene as a safety precaution.
  
  
• Factual errors: When the Union soldiers take aim at the rioters, each man steps forward with his left foot. During the Civil War, on the command "aim" a soldier would step BACK with his RIGHT foot, bringing it behind his left. Stepping forward would desecrate "the line" (all-important in nineteenth-century warfare).
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Amsterdam is outside of the draft office the first time, the red haired man behind the draft officer smokes his cigar 4 or 5 times, but never exhales any smoke. Amsterdam is smoking right next to him, and his smoke is clearly visible.
  
  
• Continuity: When Amsterdam first returns to the Five Points, he is walks alone. Monk stands in front of his shop and looks down at the town. To the right, Amsterdam and Johnny are taking before Amsterdam even meets him.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: In the final fight scene, when the camera is circling around Vallon in the white smoke, the circular camera tracks are clearly visible at the bottom of the shot.
  
  
• Continuity: Just before the draft rioters break into the Schermerhorn house, as the family is sits down to eat, large celadon vases are visible in the dining room windows that overlook the street. Moments later, when the rioters smash through the windows, the vases have disappeared.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Amsterdam and Jenny fight, before they make love, Amsterdam slams her against a wooden beam in her room. Several times, the black finish comes off the beam, revealing the white foam underneath.
  
  
• Continuity: When Jenny says to Amsterdam and Johnny "I'll leave you in the grace and favor of the Lord" Amsterdam is on the left and Johnny is on the right. When the camera cuts back to them, Johnny is on the left and Amsterdam is on the right.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Before the beginning battle takes place, the Priest and his followers stand in Paradise Square awaiting their adversaries. As Bill's men arrive, we see them appear from behind some buildings, and behind these buildings we see a number of large treetops, as if behind the square is a forested area. The problem here is that after the battle, the camera pulls back to show how and where the 5-Corners district is situated in the heart of mid-1840s Manhattan. As the shot zooms out and increases in altitude to reveal the computer-generated cityscape, there are no CGI trees in the scene that correspond with the ones behind the live-action set built to represent the Paradise Square area.
  
  

• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): SPOILER: During Monk McGinn's funeral procession, the priest is wearing a vestment called a maniple over his right wrist. The maniple is worn over the left arm only.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: SPOILER: When Bill throws his cleaver into Monk McGinn's back, the fake cleaver that's thrown can be seen bouncing off the door frame (lower left of the frame) before Monk falls.
  
  
• Continuity: SPOILER: One shot during the opening fight scene shows Bill the Butcher killing several people with his meat cleaver and knife, yet the blades stay clean.
  
  
• Continuity: SPOILER: Early in the film, a man in a striped shirt cleaves Priest Vallon in the left elbow from behind with a large curved blade. A cut-away shot shows Bill making a cutting motion at the exact same time. Vallon is holding his cross, and in freeze frame it's obviously him. Bill says "Priest" and takes several steps before he encounters Vallon for the first time during the fight. Vallon, who should be in agony from the blow to his arm, stands and turns towards Bill. Vallon's arm is nearly severed by the opening blow, yet there is no evidence of such a severe injury during the hand-to-hand fight with Bill. As Vallon dies, his coat has some blood in the area of his left elbow, but not enough for the injury as initially shown.
  
  

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