GoodFellas<\/a> may be nearly an impossible act to follow, Casino belongs on the same high shelf, just down the row a bit. Structurally, this Universal release is a neon-noir Western, the story of Las Vegas in the early 1970s, in its frontier-days beginnings.<\/p>\n\n\tCasino is a scorching, gripping depiction of the underside of the American Dream, fascinating even to us nickel-slots types. It\u2019s also excruciatingly violent, unabashedly nostalgic and coursed through with enough combustible drama to stake three mob movies.<\/p>\n
\n\tWith his monochromatic suits and ties, Robert De Niro cuts a natty figure as Sam Rothstein, a well-connected Midwest bookie who wins an appointment to head up the Tangiers Hotel in Vegas.<\/p>\n
\n\tNow the Tangiers is a gaudy menagerie, funded as was the practice, via the bulging Teamsters Union pension fund. But Sam knows all the angles and puts in round-the-clock hours. His diligence is especially gratifying to the mob \u2014 fenced off in Kansas City by the FBI \u2014 and the weekly bagload of skim money keeps the Great Plains goodfellas in chipper spirits.<\/p>\n
\n\tSam runs a neat operation, and he always likes the house odds. He doesn\u2019t like long shots or jokers in the deck. Unfortunately for Sam, his real-life joker arrives in the squat personage of longtime chum Nicky Santoro (Pesci), a volcanic goombah who reasons that Las Vegas has been created for one reason, for him to rob.<\/p>\n
\n\tThis attitude concerns Sam. He knows the reason the slowpoke rustics have tolerated the long arm of the mob is, essentially, because they kept their strong-arm discreet. As Sam rightly fears, Nicky\u2019s hot-heat ways will invariably bring on the heat.<\/p>\n
\n\tWhile Sam\u2019s professional life is a stacked deck, and he always carefully plays only the winning odds, he runs his own affairs by less logical rules. In his personal life, he\u2019s as big a chump as any tourist who ever hit the gaming tables. He falls for a beautiful, blond gold-digger, Ginger (Sharon Stone), who wraps him around her jewelry-hungry fingers.<\/p>\n
\n\tWith a friend like Nicky and a wife like Ginger, Sam doesn\u2019t need any enemies. But they come in spades as a result of his personal fold.<\/p>\n
\n\tAs they did in GoodFellas, Nicholas Pileggi and Scorsese have whacked out a torrid, taut scenario, a dark slant on the underside of big dreams and big winners. Through cagey use of the voiceover, Casino becomes a wily and cynical yet decidedly reverential glimpse at the way things really get done in a wide- open urban setting.<\/p>\n
\n\tIt\u2019s obvious that Scorsese feels more affection for that frontier era of Las Vegas over today\u2019s corporate-controlled, theme park \u201cCity of Sin.\u201d (Will Scorsese appreciate the irony when MCA\/Universal adds it to the tour?) Scorsese\u2019s direction is high-wattage electric: cunning, brash and, at times, playful. It should win him an Oscar nomination. Visually, Casino is a searing smear of sleaze, hopes and glitz, all rubbed into a darkened tint that portends downfall.<\/p>\n
\n\tA restrained De Niro is the embodiment of a casino king who is undone by his obsessive nature, a professional asset but a personal debit. Pesci is, once again, terrific as a short-fuse thug, an engaging or loathsome loose cannon with some misconnected wires.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe film\u2019s ace up its sleeve is Stone: As the silky-sodden for mer hooker with a heart of brass, her performance is sensational. Move aside the usual suspects to fit her into the Oscar nom lineup.<\/p>\n
\n\tPlaying the lounge lizards, slotwads, goombahs and corrup-tos, the supporting cast members are terrific. That includes in particular, Don Rickles as an oily floor manager, Dick Smothers as a hypocritical politico, James Woods as a puke-ish parasite and, once again, Scorsese\u2019s mother, Catherine Scorsese, as a take-no-guff, see-no-evil mama familias.<\/p>\n
\n\tTechnical contributions are aces: Robert Richardson\u2019s garish but subdued lighting clues us to the malevolence beneath the glitter, while Thelma Schoonmaker Powell\u2019s editing perfectly punctu ates the frenzy. An eclectic stack of pop songs, highlighted by some blistering early Stones, juice this high-quality roller. \u2014 Duane Byrge, originally published on Nov. 17, 1995. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Nov. 22, 1995, Universal released A Martin Scorsese Picture, as the Las Vegas epic Casino hit theaters.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":300026,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,134813,75,337],"class_list":{"0":"post-300025","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-classic-reviews","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}