10 Movie Mentors Who Were Actually Complete Morons
5. Bill The Butcher Cutting - Gangs Of New York
If you're living in a hyper-violent society, it's probably best to be paranoid about who you trust - after all, in the Five Points you can string up an influential police figure and no-one bats an eyelid. You've got to be careful who you bring into your inner circle. Certainly, dont bring the lad whose father you brutally killed - in front of his eyes, no less.
Sure, he's not quite as good a fighter as you, but he's still frighteningly competent: he fish-hooked your trusted lieutenant but really, he doesn't have to be. Of course Bill didn't actually know for the longest time that Amsterdam is the son if his greatest enemy, and when he finds out he throws a knife through him. Yet up until the point, he's let Amsterdam hang around him as pretty much his right-hand man. Yes, he proves to be an excellent footsoldier and saves Bill's life once, but let me ask you this: did Bill really make any effort to find out who Amsterdam was? Though he's hiding his identity, hes obviously an Irish immigrant and surely, as a man fixated on Priest Vallon, Bill would know that he had a son of the same name.
If simple logic didn't make it obvious, he can always go and ask half of Paradise Square, including McGloin, who actually joined Bill's Natives from Vallon's Dead Rabbits. Granted, McGloin isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but even he could probably identify an Irish lad called Amsterdam as the kid he once knew. After all, there's only so many Amsterdams in New York. Theres so many ways he could've been given away, and Bill conveniently overlooks them all. When he does find out, he's already taught his young protégé all about Five Points politics, knowledge later used against him when Amsterdam re-convenes the Dead Rabbits. If Bill had simply insisted on proper background checks, he might've saved himself a whole heap of trouble.