01/29/10 - Casino

Casino (1995, 178 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112641/

I essentially decided on random which of three movies I would watch and it landed on Casino. The other two will probably be posted soon enough. Casino I got the impression was a weaker Goodfellas (both Scorsese pictures) and I didn't like Goodfellas that much. So I was hesitant upon beginning this film as to what I should expect.

Casino stars Robert De Niro as Sam "Ace" Rothstein who owns a Las Vegas casino. His wife Ginger McKenna is played by Sharon Stone and her old pimp friend is Lester Diamond (James Woods). Joe Pesci plays Nicky Santoro, a longtime friend of Rothstein. There's plenty of other people in Scorsese's ensemble cast but most of the plot development revolves around these four (though even Diamond is small compared to the other three).

First, Woods is amazing in this. I really liked what he did with his character. He wasn't in many scenes but he made his character memorable. Notably: at one point Ginger is on the phone with Sam and in the background is Lester talking with Sam's daughter. I really got the impression that he was actually talking and holding a serious conversation with the girl - and maybe he was - but he also shows this in a completely natural way. This is just one example. I wished this character would have been more prominent so that Woods could have had more screen time. Next, De Niro. I honestly think this is the best performance I've seen by De Niro. Taxi Driver is up there since he pretty much carries that film all by himself, but here he has to show lots of different sides of one character to really make them believable. And he does this perfectly, making Sam cold and calculating at one time and during another he's completely vulnerable due to his love of Ginger and daughter Amy. Moving on we have Sharon Stone as Ginger McKenna. Ginger is probably the weakest acted of the three main characters but I can't place my finger on exactly why. Maybe it's because this character seems rehashed from tons of other movies and just isn't as original as the others (except Pesci's which I'll get to next). I mean, Stone does a good job most of the time but some times it just doesn't hit right. Finally, there's Joe Pesci. Poor, poor typecast Joe Pesci. Honestly, I don't know how good an actor Pesci really is because he plays the exact same person in every movie. But he really plays this person amazingly well so I give him tons of props.

Casino's biggest flaw is that it hits a huge lull at around the one hour mark. And I realized this and immediately also realized I had two hours left. This was kind of upsetting but then it started picking up again and moving forward and all was good. To be honest, when the biggest flaw of a movie is that it hits a lull a ways in but shortly gets back out that's usually a sign of a pretty good movie. That's true here: Casino is a good movie. It's a great movie. And let me explain why.

When you step back and look at it, Casino moves through it's story at it's own pace. Scorsese wants to tell the whole story the way he wants to. That means slowing everything down and maybe throwing in some other tangential facts here and there. But that makes the story more real. Honestly, the Lester Diamond character doesn't do a whole whole lot. To be even more honest, the character could be scrapped completely and the arc of Ginger failing (in a similar way) could still be achieved. But Scorsese leaves it in. It creates better character development. I don't know how real Casino is compared to it's source material or how real Goodfellas is compared to it's source material, but I felt like Scorsese was telling me how stuff happened here. In Goodfellas I felt like I was watching some hybrid creation of some fact and mostly fiction. Though Casino might be even less real than Goodfellas, I don't get that impression. And this all falls on Scorsese's shoulders for excellent directing.

Another Scorsese staple besides just good directing is an amazing soundtrack. Normally, I mention the soundtrack near the end right before I do a rating and conclusion. Not so for Casino. I'm mentioning it early because it's important. When I think of directors that make sure to have amazing music backing up their movie I think of Scorsese and Tarantino. Naturally, I also think of The Rolling Stones for Scorsese and they feature prominently here. I want to say that the entire "Can't You Hear Me Knocking" plays at one prominent point. Overall, the soundtrack is amazing from start to finish. Sure, the Stones play during probably the most important points because that's seemingly standard with Scorsese but there's so many other excellent track choices that pop up during the movie. It's phenomenal. As I sat watching this movie I thought that if I ever had the chance to meet Scorsese that that would be the one question I asked him: What do you do to select the perfect songs for your movies?

Now, as for how Casino plays out. At the beginning we get a teaser of a scene to come: Sam gets blown up in his car. Only we don't see what really happens. He lives, but for probably more than two hours I'm watching this with the belief that he's going to die at some point. This is a great teaser. I bet this film would be even better on a second watch when I knew some of the important parts that were coming and not trying to anticipate Sam's death. The voice over of him and Nicky (who I knew died in the famous bat scene) only added to this. My thinking was that since Nicky is doing a voice over and he's dead at the end that Sam must also be dead. As an aside, I will say that another character added a voice over at one point: Frank Marino (Frank Vincent). This one instance was completely out of place and I didn't like it. Also, Pesci's voice was annoying at first during his voice over, since it's naturally angry or something and it just didn't work. But as the movie moved on I got more used to it. Also, as the movie develops, the voice overs are used less and less until they reappear at the end. And no, that's not why I didn't mind Pesci's voice, it's just that it became less grating than it started off. But on the whole I really liked the way the voice overs were used to set up things that would have been really difficult to show up front.

There's so many things that are just amazing about Casino. One other thing is the noting of the holes out in the desert. They're constantly alluded to and serve this perpetually threatening menace out there. Though neither Sam nor Nicky die in one of these holes (other lesser character do), I always had a feeling that they were out there and could kill a prominent character at any time. I loved how these things were alluded to but not really used until the very end. The desert scene in the middle of the movie was chilling for just this reason. I thought this was really well done. On the whole, the entire Las Vegas setting is used well. From here outside the city to inside the city to in the casino itself everything is done really well and I felt like the film captured Las Vegas's unique feel and taste. Even the gritty underbelly of Las Vegas is captured in some sick and twisted scenes of torture. But this just shows how unrelenting Scorsese is for this film in my opinion. I get the impression he truly wanted to capture a specific look and feel and he did just about everything right in getting this done.

Overall, I gave this film a 9/10. I place it right below The Departed in my current ranking of Scorsese films. And I loved The Departed so much as to place it as one of the best movies of the 2000s so this is in high company. I was expecting a weak Goodfellas and I ended up watching a movie that really blew Goodfellas out of the water in my opinion. Surprisingly, I disliked Goodfellas for the same reason as Casino - thinking that it was too long. But Casino is about 30 minutes longer. I cannot state how stunned I was with how amazing this film was.