I have said, on more than one occasion, that Martin Scorsese is my favorite living director. Why, then, had I not seen Casino until recently? That I can answer: I was obviously not always a fan, and when it came out, it looked an awful lot like Goodfellas. Then again, I hadn’t seen Goodfellas yet either, or any Scorsese movie truth be told. My first exposure was Taxi Driver, and that one is still one of my all-time favorite movies. Since then, I’ve done what I can to fill my pop culture gaps, and Scorsese’s extended filmography certainly qualifies. But why skip Casino? It’s got a reputation as good as many of Scorsese’s best, but I could never shake that impression that it was an awful lot like Goodfellas. Why shouldn’t I? Both films were helmed by Scorsese, starred Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci, and were based on a book by Nicholas Pileggi.
I finally closed that gap when I learned it was leaving Showtime soon. And, as expected, I was glad I did.
Casino is the story of childhood friends Sam Rothstein (De Niro) and Nicky Santoro (Pesci). Sam is a lifelong gambler, in that gambling for him is a science and he rarely loses. Nicky is a muscle for the mob out of Kansas City, the mob’s highest ranking rep in Vegas since they can’t quite go that far West without being arrested. For Sam, running a casino is what he was born for. He knows how to play the odds, spot a cheat, and deal with any problem that might turn up as he tries to get himself a gaming license. For Nicky, well, he’s a hothead who does what hotheads played by Joe Pesci do in Martin Scorsese movies, but he’s no dummy. The one weakness Sam has, a man who plays the odds forever to his own favor, is he falls in love with Ginger (Sharon Stone), herself a casino regular who is deeply in love with the sleaziest man in Vegas from the looks of things. And yes, that man is played by James Woods. Why do you ask?
Naturally, Sam’s inability to see what is plainly in front of him will cost him everything while the mob demands more all the time. Ginger says up front that she doesn’t love Sam, and he more or less decides to disregard that idea. And yes, Nicky is going to do the kinds of things that are going to get him in a lot of trouble with the bosses because that’s what Joe Pesci characters do in these movies.
There’s a lot going on here, and it all plays out as one big epic, told in alternating voiceover by Sam and Nicky, with a quick aside given to Nicky’s righthand man at one point, and I enjoyed every second of it. There are so many plates in the air, and De Niro’s Sam is balancing them all incredibly well except for the obvious one, the one even Nicky can see coming, namely Ginger. Yeah, it is a lot like Goodfellas where mobsters die quickly, violently, and unexpectedly, but this time there’s the added problem of running a business that is theoretically legitimate but obviously isn’t. And like Goodfellas, it ends with everything falling down, but in a way that is mostly about the end of an era and not just the downfall of a single man.
On a final note, I mentioned above that De Niro and Pesci had alternating voiceovers, and voiceover does lead to certain expectations. The way that Pesci’s final scene played out with the voiceover actually struck me as being particularly clever, a quick little moment that made me smile a little. It also, as I said to my pal William Watson, was a lot more clever than the entirety of Don’t Look Up, which says as much about Casino as it does Don’t Look Up. I think it’s pretty clear which movie I greatly preferred.
Grade: A
0 Comments