In theaters

“CHARLIE’S ANGELS 2: FULL THROTTLE,” directed by McG, written by John August, Cormac Wibberley and Marianne Wibberley, 95 minutes, rated PG-13.

In “Charlie’s Angels 2: Full Throttle,” a sequel to the 2000 hit “Charlie’s Angels,” the angels are back, but this time out, they fall from grace, tripping over their halos and stumbling over their stilettos as if their wings have been clipped with the blunt end of an ax.

As directed by McG from a script by John August, Cormac Wibberley and Marianne Wibberley, “Full Throttle” is a full-on mess, harpooning the angels with a storyline that’s so nonsensical, they soil their silver lining and tumble to the ground.

In the film, Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu reprise their roles as Natalie, Dylan and Alex, three apparently superhuman women who just want to look great and have fun while working for Charlie (voice of John Forsythe) and delivering leggy upper-cuts to crime.

This time out, the crime at hand has something to do with several stolen identities from the Witness Protection Program, a plot that literally goes nowhere and everywhere as the film fragments into an army of diverging subplots, none of which is especially interesting as all are used only to boost the action.

Dividing the action into frenetic chunks are all sorts of creeps, including a much-

tattooed Irish mobster

(Justin Theroux) who wants to stick it to Dylan for sending him to the big house, and a fallen Angel named Madison (Demi Moore) who’s so emasculating, she makes Joan Crawford in “Johnny Guitar” look as if she’d rather be playing a harp.

Shooting from the hip is a given with this movie, but throughout, too much of it seems as if it was shot on the fly.

It’s rushed and witless, which is especially disappointing since the last film was such a raucous success, striking just the right absurdist tone in capturing one of the more ludicrous television shows of the mid-1970s and early 1980s.

It worked because it was a giddy parody of pop culture, a film so undeniably weightless and slight, it could melt in your own hand.

But “Full Throttle” dies by its own hand. As the title suggests, there apparently was pressure to jack everything here into the stratosphere – bigger stunts, bigger hair, bigger cameos. But by doing so, McG doesn’t so much entertain as he overwhelms. Worse, his film has the distinction of making Bernie Mac, of all people, unfunny as the new Bosley.

And that, in the end, isn’t just a crime, but hardly the work of an angel.

Grade: D+

On video and DVD

“GANGS OF NEW YORK,” directed by Martin Scorsese, written by Jay Cocks, Steven Zaillian and Kenneth Lonergan, 165 minutes, rated R.

Of all the things Martin Scorsese gives us in “Gangs of New York” – a rousing opening, colorful characters, several impressively conceived battle scenes, an epic sweep and huge sets that show off the film’s $100-plus million budget – the most notable omission is a character worth rooting for.

Other flaws keep the film from achieving the greatness its hype suggests-it’s too long, too stagy, too broad, too unfocused and, worst of all, its history of New York City is annoyingly inaccurate. But none of this is ever as unfortunate as Scorsese’s inability to give us a character worth caring about.

Based on Herbert Asbury’s 1928 chronicle of old New York, the film begins in 1846 with a bloody rush: A 5-year-old Irish boy – caught in the throes of a major turf war between Irish immigrants and longtime New Yorkers staking their claim to New York City’s Five Points section of lower Manhattan – witnesses his father’s death at the hands of Bill the Butcher (Daniel Day-Lewis), a vicious man with a glass eye whose vision for the Five Points has no room for those who weren’t “native born.”

Cut to 1863. With the rest of the country fighting the Civil War and the Draft Riots brewing, the boy, now a man who calls himself Amsterdam (Leonardo DiCaprio), wants Butcher’s head on a block, which he plans to get by insinuating himself into the man’s life and fooling him with a close friendship.

He pulls that off – too easily, it should be said – but in the process, DiCaprio alienates the audience with a performance that’s so tight-fisted with hate, it never bridges the gap between Amsterdam’s fury and the pain he must feel for losing his father.

With Cameron Diaz as Amsterdam’s love interest – a squirrelly pickpocket who’s about as likable as syphilis – and supporting turns from Jim Broadbent, Henry Thomas, Liam Neeson, John C. Reilly and Brendan Gleeson, “Gangs of New York” is too big and bawdy to have any room for what it really needs: a soul.

It’s a mess of unrealized ideas, storylines and themes, some of which burn on screen when they do leave their mark, but too many of which are trampled amid Scorsese’s admirable – if uncontainable -ambition.

Grade: C

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, Thursdays on WLBZ 2 and WCSH 6, and are archived on RottenTomatoes.com. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.