Where to watch Casino
4 Stars
This Martin Scorsese film depicts the Janus-like quality of Las Vegas–it has a glittering, glamorous face, as well as a brutal, cruel one. Ace Rothstein and Nicky Santoro, mobsters who move to Las Vegas to make their mark, live and work in this paradoxical world. Seen through their eyes, each as a foil to the other, the details of mob involvement in the casinos of the 1970s and ’80s are revealed. Ace is the smooth operator of the Tangiers casino, while Nicky is his boyhood friend and tough strongman, robbing and shaking down the locals. However, they each have a tragic flaw–Ace falls in love with a hustler, Ginger, and Nicky falls into an ever-deepening spiral of drugs and violence.
Martin Scorsese’s Casino was unjustly overlooked during its theatrical run during the holiday season in 1995. Audiences and the Academy largely ignored this masterpiece in favor of more traditional cinematic offerings. It also didn’t help that Goodfellas was still fresh in people’s memory and, at the time, was preferred over the, perceived, warmed-over re-hash of Casino. But that is a surface-level analysis based on the commonality that DeNiro and Pesci are reteaming on a ‘mob’ picture. Casino is an equally powerful film with the same vigor and technical filmmaking that made Goodfellas such a memorable movie.
The film’s three-hour running time is fully utilized without a dull moment or false scene. Sharon Stone, in an Oscar-nominated performance, is fantastic in conveying the bravado, coldness, and anxieties of a lifelong Vegas hustler. The dizzying amount of footage has been assembled in one of the year’s outstanding editing jobs, regardless of whether the Academy acknowledged the work. Casino is a towering achievement in narrative clarity and filmmaking prowess.
Directed by: Martin Scorsese
Written by: Nicholas Pileggi, Martin Scorsese
Starring: Robert De Niro, Sharon Stone, Joe Pesci