TCM’s 31 Days of Oscar: ‘Gangs of New York’ Makes Its Network Premiere During an Evening of Acclaimed Crime Films

Each day, Remind will direct you to at least one (often several) notable classic movies worth tuning in to on TV for a given day.

Gangs of New York — Wednesday, March 8, late-night at 12am ET/9pm PT on TCM

Gangs of New York, director Martin Scorsese’s epic 2002 historical drama, makes its Turner Classic Movies premiere later tonight as a centerpiece of the network’s 31 Days of Oscar evening lineup devoted to Academy Award-winning and -nominated crime films that begins earlier in primetime with The French Connection (1971) and Bonnie and Clyde (1967), and is followed by The Public Enemy (1931) and Shaft (1971).

Set in 1862, Gangs of New York follows Amsterdam Vallon (Leonardo DiCaprio, in his first of several collaborations with Scorsese) as he returns to the Five Points area of the titular city seeking revenge against his father’s killer — Bill “The Butcher” Cutting (Daniel Day-Lewis, fantastic as always in a Best Actor-nominated performance). Cameron Diaz, Jim Broadbent, John C. Reilly, Henry Thomas, Liam Neeson and Brendan Gleeson also star.

The film earned Scorsese his fourth Best Director nomination, but he continued to be shut out from a win (he would have to wait four more years before he finally brought home Oscar gold for the first time with The Departed). In fact, Gangs did not win any of the 10 categories in which it was nominated; along with the nods for Scorsese and Day-Lewis, its other nominations included Best Picture, Best Original Song (U2’s “The Hands That Built America”), and nominations for longtime Scorsese collaborators Thelma Schoonmaker (Editing) and Michael Ballhaus (Cinematography).