Casino (1995) directed by Martin Scorsese • Reviews, film + cast
Hi Kip – Boy, you really nailed that GATSBY/GOODFELLAS observation! I had to take another look at it to jog my memory, but you're right; that scene in GOODFELLAS with Gina Mastrogiacomo showing her girlfriends around that monumentally tacky apartment is EXACTLY a callback (unintentional or not) to a similar scene with Karen Black in THE GREAT GATSBY. Even down to there being a little furball of a dog involved.
And your observation about Elizabeth Shue in LEAVING LAS VEGAS is also very keen. I’m with you in not having found her performance or embodiment of the character all that believable. I’d never looked at it before in context with what Stone does with her role, but now that I have…wow. What Sharon Stone makes of that role becomes even more impressive.
I’m glad you can appreciate CASINO while being a bigger fan of GOODFELLAS. I love GOODFELLAS, too. But CASINO just gets me where I live. Perhaps it’s my Catholic upbringing (which I’m happy to say has lapsed) and Scorsese framing this film as a quasi-religious sin-redemption polemic.
Thank you, Kip, for your thoughtful comments and for reading this post (so quickly!) Take care!
Until the early 1980s, had a huge stake in . But while they ran the casinos, they didn't run the town. They had to use fronts to get their men in to run everything. One of these fronts is Sam "Ace" Rothstein (De Niro), a Jewish gambling prodigy who, having made big money for his Mafia associates in the past, is sent to Vegas to run the Tangiers casino-hotel for the Chicago Outfit. Rothstein, a ruthlessly logical and efficient character, soon turns the Tangiers into a successful and profitable organisation for the Mob bosses, but things start to go shaky when Rothstein falls head-over-heels in love with Ginger (Stone), a beautifully seductive but manipulative and troubled casino hustler. Things get even more complicated by the arrival of Rothstein's old friend Nicky Santoro (Pesci), a psychotically hot-headed mobster sent by the bosses to watch over Rothstein's operation; he soon decides to make Las Vegas his personal kingdom, bringing much undesired attention on both himself and Rothstein. Tensions steadily escalate between the three that will end up .
Robert De Niro, Sharon Stone and Joe Pesci star in director Martin Scorsese's riveting look at how blind ambition, white-hot passion and 24-karat greed toppled an empire. Las Vegas 1973 is the setting for this fact-based story about the Mob's multi-million dollar casino operation where fortunes and lives were made and lost with a roll of the dice.
Casino movie review & film summary (1995)
The film is loosely based on the story of Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal, who unofficially ran four casinos for the Chicago Outfit and who served as the inspiration for the Rothstein character, as well as Anthony "Tony the Ant" Spilotro, a Chicago Outfit enforcer who had ambitions of becoming boss of his own crime family and was the inspiration for Santoro's character. Although the film isn't an exact account of what happened (a lot of that is ), .
opens with short sequence in 1983 before moving on to the meat of the story, which is related through flashbacks. Director Martin Scorsese makes heavy use of voiceovers, employing disembodied monologues by both lead actors -- Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci -- to fill in gaps. The sheer volume of words sporadically detracts from character development, but it is integrated successfully enough not to seem overly intrusive. While the intelligence and wit of the voiceovers makes them palatable, such nonstop talking isn't always the best way to convey a story -- the temptation to something, rather than it, is too great. doesn't always avoid that trap.
Casino in some respects is director Martin Scorsese dialing up to 11. Oh, you want the mob life? Well here it is in Chairman of the board brashness and lurid VEGAS BABY! sindulgence, where gambling king and long-term gaming licensee in waiting Sam “Ace” Rothstein (Robert De Niro) funnels money out the back door of the fictional Tangiers hotel he all but runs for the mob elders back East. To him, it’s a “morality carwash.” There’s almost too much story to cram into Casino, with multiple back-and-forth narration dumps from Ace and best friend from “back home” Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci), and virtually wall to music and songs, exhaustively sourced by Scorsese himself with musician Robbie Robertson. Perhaps that’s the point—Vegas, whether wilder and Mob run, or a homogenized “Disneyland” as Ace disparages when big business and their own greed and carelessness finally squeezed the bosses out, has always been about sensory overload. Critic David Thomson perhaps has the right idea, revisiting the film often, but in chunks—“half an hour here or there, passages, riffs, routines, ‘numbers’ if you like—and I think that references to music are vital,” he says. It’s the sensation, the feeling you get from listening to a piece of music over and over again. From the damning final chorus of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in the opening scene, where Ace gets blown up in his car and goes hurtling through a Saul and Elaine Bass designed inferno of flames and Vegas strip—Bad Men before Mad Men; to the tapestry of hooks and grooves that fit the mood and glide of a dream town ripe for the picking. “I was very lucky to be able to choose from over forty years of music and in most cases to be able to get it into the film,” the director recounts in . “Certain songs and pieces of music, when you play them against the picture, change everything. So it’s very, very delicate. In Goodfellas the sound is more Phil Spector, while in this picture it’s more the Stones, especially “Can’t you hear me knocking?” which is a key song in the film.” Make hay while the desert sun shines, baby.
Martin Scorsese has said (according to IMDB trivia) that this movie has no plot, and though a lot happens, I can see what he’s saying. Everything in this movie is fairly predictable (both the rise and the fall) but that doesn’t make it any less interesting. Having already seen Goodfellas, I had an expectation for how this story would unfold. There would be a lot of money, violence and excess before the eventual bloody fallout. Like that film, Casino relies on character narration though this time the omniscient perspective comes from both Sam Rothstein (Robert De Niro) and his hot tempered buddy, Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci).
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Robert De Niro, Sharon Stone and Joe Pesci star in Martin Scorsese’s riveting look at how blind ambition, white-hot passion and 24-karat greed toppled a Las Vegas casino empire.
It gives the film some of its best lines
The film is based on the true story of Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal, who the mob employed to take control from the Teamsters in Las Vegas in 1971, running a number of casinos beginning with the Stardust. His muscle (who himself muscled in, unofficially) was his childhood friend from Chicago, Tony Spilotro—our “heroes” are based on these guys. Let’s say a number of things went wrong with the dream ticket—a disgruntled hood who travels between Kansas and Vegas foolishly keeps a record of expenses owed; the greedy mob bump off Kevin Pollak’s straight hotel frontman Phillip Green’s previously unknown former business partner Anna Scott when she wins a legal case against him for her share; a wiretap on an unrelated murder picks up the aforementioned hood grumbling about being stiffed for money; and so on. For Spilotro, his main weakness was falling for Geri McGee, a “chip hustler,” hooker and topless dancer (portrayed as Ginger, by a terrific Sharon Stone). He married her, setting aside money and jewelry in her name, but actually his safety net, but their marriage collapsed into a Taylor and Burton-esque spiral of recriminations, alcoholism, control freakery and distrust, Geri turning for solace to Tony (as happens in the film).
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Scorsese’s operatic recounting of how organized crime built a gambler’s paradise out of the Nevada desert in Las Vegas. Stars Robert De Niro as expert handicapper “Ace” Rothstein and Joe Pesci as mob enforcer Nicky Santoro, the maniacal muscle who does Ace’s dirty work, both sent west to head operations at the Tangiers Casino—which makes money hand over fist, until an impetuous, street smart hustler named Ginger (Sharon Stone, in a magnificently frayed performance) drives a wedge between the two men. A film as extravagant as the gaudy milieu it depicts, and a savagely funny depiction of moral rot amidst obscene opulence.
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HA!
Hello, Neely (please forgive me if you’ve told me your name and I’ve forgotten it. As you note, it’s been a while).
To that subject, I can’t tell you how encouragin’ it is (said in Ruth Gordon’s voice) to know you check out my site regularly. Weekly, yet! I was growing tired of Mr. Back to the Beach, as well. So, thanks for letting me know SOMEONE is out there and aware when I’m MIA.
It’s also encouraging that this essay might inspire you to check out CASINO. One of the most consistent criticisms levied at CASINO is that it is, indeed, a retread of GOODFELLAS, but I’ve always thought it a hollow observation given the similarities of most Mob movies. Both are Scorsese at his best, but only CASINO has Sharon Stone, and that’s like having the Golden Ticket.
I applaud your plan to seek shelter from that ball event monopolizing the airwaves today, and I got a good laugh (because I identified) from your stated reason for not caring for sports, war, and western films. And I can’t really deal with Drag Race either…at least not since the drag aesthetic has been co-opted by Home Shopping Network and most of the newscasters and weather reporters in LA.
My partner is interested in seeing Killers of the Flower Moon (which I loved), so maybe we’ll be settling in for 3 ½ hours of Scorsese ourselves, this evening.
You made my day with your complimentary and very funny comments, Neely. I thank you so much for sticking around and having faith that I hadn’t forgotten my Blogger password or something.
Hope you enjoy CASINO!
Casino streaming: where to watch movie online
Five years after Goodfellas, Martin Scorsese returned to the subject of organised crime with this virtuosic chronicle of Las Vegas’s formative years. Starring Robert De Niro and an Oscar®-nominated Sharon Stone, Casino is a technically-dazzling epic from one of America’s greatest living filmmakers.