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All Movie Info
Starring:
Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Sharon Stone, James Woods, Don Rickles, Alan King, Kevin Pollak, L.Q. Jones, Dick Smothers, John Bloom, Frankie Avalon, Steve Allen, Jayne Meadows, Jerry Vale
Directed By:
Martin Scorsese
Written By:
Nicholas Pileggi, Martin Scorsese
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Casino (1995)
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Movie Review by Jarrod
May 19th, 2008
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'Casino' was one of the last great mob movies, and ended Martin Scorsese's cycle of mob films, which started with Mean Streets back in 1973, and reached its second chapter in Goodfellas, now De Niro and Pesci are back (in their third pairing) in a remarkably fierce and brutal crime drama. 'Casino' looks and feels a lot like Goodfellas, with lots of great music from the time period, and excessive ongoing narration, which is well-written and provides insight into the characters' minds as well as informs us of their respective back stories, where they got their start, how they ended up in Vegas, what they hope to accomplish there. De Niro is Sam Rothstein, a skilled bookie and gambler who gets the chance to run a high-end casino called the Tangiers. He is good at making money, earns big for the bosses further east. He is protected by old friend Nicky (Pesci), a volatile hothead who likes killing and assaulting people. Nicky is reckless and unpredictable, he jeopardizes Sam's operation by drawing unwanted attention to it. Sam monitors customers and staff members closely, looking for cheaters; one unfortunate soul gets electrocuted with a cattle prod, then has his right hand smashed with a hammer. The house literally always wins; hot streaks are regarded with suspicion, and one is discouraged from winning too much. While keeping his fat-cat superiors satisfied with steady profits, Sam also hires the relatives of local officials, provides politicians with call girls and swanky hotel rooms to keep them appeased and out of his business. Sam is a smart and cautious man, but he makes two major mistakes.
One of them is his association with Nicky, whose ambitions drive him to consider potentially usurping Sam or moving away from his role as hired muscle to pursue his own ill-fated ventures. He does not tread lightly, and makes himself an easy target for the feds. Sam's second mistake is his involvement with and eventual marriage to Ginger (Sharon Stone), a greedy ex-hooker. Sam loves her, and has a child with her, promises to give her everything she wants, including $1 million in gaudy gold jewelry, but Ginger is still attached to the sleazy Lester (James Woods), a hustler and pimp who repeatedly asks her for money, which she then steals from Sam. Ginger self-destructs with drugs and booze, starts up an affair with Nicky, while Sam tries to hold everything together as financial pressures, raids, and tax investigations begin to occur. 'Casino' is based on a book by Nicholas Pileggi, who co-wrote the screenplay with Scorsese. Pileggi has a startlingly intimate knowledge of this world, knows it inside and out, and shows us what happens behind-the-scenes in Vegas, how things work in the mob hierarchy, down to the finest detail. This is, in part, what makes 'Casino' so captivating.
But, of course, there are also the strongly defined central relationships, Sam's explosive personal life especially, his troubled, collapsing marriage to the increasingly desperate and unstable Ginger. De Niro plays Sam with charm and sophistication; in many ways, he is like Jimmy Conway from Goodfellas, has a talent for crime, but is not an especially evil person. He treats Ginger with more kindness and respect than she is used to, says he trusts her with his life, but she is still inexplicably drawn to Lester, a shifty degenerate who exploits and manipulates her, an awful influence, but her loyalty to him defies logic. Sam is even willing to accept that she might have a hard time getting over Lester, may still have an attachment to him, but there is a limit to how much he will tolerate. This is some of Sharon Stone's best acting; Ginger is a lovely woman, but deteriorates into a screaming, hissing harpy, fueled by sadness, anger, and lots of coke.
De Niro is just the right choice for Sam; the first scene shows Sam getting blown up by a car bomb, which, in the style of Sunset Boulevard and other films from the noir era of the 40s and 50s, triggers narration by a character who is already presumably dead; Kevin Spacey did that in American Beauty, too. The events leading up to that precise moment are recounted, but 'Casino' goes beyond that, reveals that Sam actually survived the explosion, much to our surprise. Pesci is dynamite; this performance is arguably superior to his work in Goodfellas, for which he won an Oscar. Nicky is a lot like Tommy DeVito, but maybe slightly less of a psychopath. One of the key scenes involves the savage beating of Nicky and his brother Dominick with baseball bats. Gruesome violence abounds elsewhere, too, with that hand-smashing scene, and a scene where Nicky stabs a guy in the neck with a pen, not to mention multiple shootings. Robert Richardson's cinematography is dazzling; Vegas has rarely looked so vibrant. Thelma Schoonmaker's editing is top-notch; 'Casino' is an absorbing three-hour experience. Classic Scorsese.
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