Masterful Movie

Excellent, a Must See

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Blistering performances.

Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Sharon Stone. Now there's a group of people with which to make a movie. Casino takes place in Las Vegas in the 70s. Sam "Ace" Rothstein (De Niro) is sent to Vegas by the mob to run a casino for them. After a while they also send Nicky Santoro (Pesci) to keep the wheels running and to act as muscle for Rothstein. Unfortunately, these two have very different ideas on how things should be run. Ace would like nothing more than to run his casino, pay his "honest" dues to the mob and to just sit back and relax. Whereas Nicky wants to climb all the way to the top, no matter how many bodies he has to leave on his wake.This movie is often compared to Goodfellas, Scorsese's previous masterpiece. And I can definitely see why. We have the mob, gangsters a plenty, rags to riches themes, and even two of the same actors, although Pesci is deservedly in a much bigger role this time around.And yet Goodfellas it ain't. It's plenty good on its own merits, but it lacks that degree of identifiability a proper old time gangster film has. The 70s and Las Vegas muddle up the story, make it seem that much dirtier. Drugs flow freely, no one can be trusted and none of the main characters is at all likable. Which is most definitely the point, but it is also the reason why I prefer Goodfellas. A much better comparison mood-wise would be Scarface, although that takes an even harsher stance on the viability of the gangster lifestyle. Whereas this movie is kind of half-n-half.Still, a good movie by any measure. Well worth a watch for all fans of the gangster genre.

Casino (1995) is , in my opinion , the best film of that year if not one of the best of the decade. Martin Scorsese's fascinating film "Casino" knows a lot about the Mafia's relationship with Las Vegas. It's based on a book by Nicholas Pileggi, who had full access to a man who once ran four casinos for the mob, and whose true story inspires the movie's plot. As IMDb rightly puts it it is a film of greed , money , power and most importantly deception. In terms of acting De Niro steals the show as 'Sam Rothstein' as well as Sharon Stone who also portrays a very convincing performance. I believe the explanation of how 'Rothstein' runs the Casino are the most intriguing scene's of the whole film (as in how it is shot and acted) with De Niro giving us an 'in absolute character' performance. My only dislike for the film is what most people have recognised when watching it and that is it's similarity to 'Goodfellas' ( characters and narrative) and the fact that Joe Pesci plays the same little angry Italian everytime but this pales in comparison to the positives. Ultimately , having of finally watched this film after years of wanting to i regard it as one of the best of that decade and recommend it highly.

I saw this movie 20 years after its initial release. Yes, I know, not good. But this gave me the opportunity to look at it from a perspective where movie styles have changed. Did it stand the test of time? It is safe to say that this movie more or less concluded the typical mafia movie era, movies with overactive swearing gangster types, Italian lingo, violence, extortion, addiction. I must say, watching this film gave me the feeling that I had seen it all before. This is a template movie, a template for the style, a template for the characters, a template for the violence, templates for practically everything. As a result everybody is behaving one- dimensional, behaving as expected, no character development. Joe Pesci is really a caricature of himself, Robert De Niro is flat. Sharon Stone's part is at times interesting to watch. All in all this movie gets 6 out of 10 from me, mainly because the pace is okay.

The only thing that kept me watching this movie was to learn what happened to the character played by de Niro, apparently blown up by a car bomb at the beginning.As in GOOODFELLAS, there is voice-over narration, this time by de Niro and Pesci (Ray Liotta was the narrator in the former film), but it is nowhere near as effective, and often provides unnecessary, even distracting asides, that only further lengthen a film that could easily have done with 30 minutes less. Curiously enough, GOODFELLAS also had de Niro and Pesci in the cast, led by a highly inspired Liotta, but the only performance in CASINO worthy of any mention is that of Sharon Stone, who portrays a truly repellent character (the incident where she binds up her daughter and confines her to a cupboard is a bolt from the blue and struck me as unconvincing, perhaps because nothing in her actions toward her child suggest anything so excessive). She is very convincing, however, in her descent into drugs and her relationship with her pimp, the "real" love in her life, as opposed to the source of wealth that de Niro represents to her.Pesci reprises his exceedingly violent character of GOODFELLAS and kills people as routinely as one would flies. This time, however, he is less credible because he is reportedly clever enough to take over the running of murky business from other ruthless criminals, but then commits excesses so stupid as to make suspension of disbelief impossible. His affair with Stone is also difficult to swallow. I could accept a blow job or one-off sex because she is too drugged up to reason it out, but surely he knows that de Niro will not tolerate it, and he is just too flippant about it. Ultimately, his character is just not rounded enough to stand, and so wayward as to become confusing, annoying, and ultimately lose the viewer's interest.The character played by de Niro is a very odd customer indeed, and the actor's talent is sadly wasted in a part much too ambiguous for me to enjoy. He wants to go clean but stupidly allows ultra-violent chum, Pesci, to join his casino and childishly believes Pesci's promises of good behavior and compliance with the "legit" nature of the casino operation. Even harder to swallow is that he should entrust the key to his fortune to Stone, even after he finds her cuddling her up to her pimp again. De Niro seems rather unsure about the role, too. I spent the whole movie waiting for the character to do something but ultimately he accepts everything like the Good Samaritan: he takes in dangerman Pesci, marries pimp Woods-infatuated Stone, has a distant relationship with his daughter that unexpectedly turns into something closer, loses half of his fortune without a whimper when he has seemed money-driven from the start, and is just too polite and quiet to convince me that I haven't wasted close on three hours watching purposeless characters going nowhere.Photography is competent, somewhat reminiscent of GOODFELLAS but less inspired. Direction is very disappointing, especially in light of the standards set by Scorcese in TAXI DRIVER and GOODFELLAS.