Getting Into Gang War: Beginning with the superficial similarities between The Two Towers

and Gangs of New York as regards bloody hand-to-hand combat, Salman Rushdie writes a Washington Post op-ed piece contrasting the moral certainty of the War of the Rings with the “amoral world of bare-knuckle power” of Scorsese’s New York. Here’s his punchline: “Ambiguity is out of fashion, however. We will be given a war of heroes against villains at all costs. After all, The Two Towers is a vast popular success, and Gangs of New York is doing no better than modest business. Perhaps when the time for the Oscars comes round, the academy will see fit to reward the more profound complexities of the Scorsese movie. But by March we may all be preoccupied by a greater, darker contest than the one for the Academy Awards.”