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Tripwire Reviews Martin Scorsese’s Casino Available To Watch On Streaming From Today
Ace In The Hole
Martin Scorsese’s Casino, first released back in 1995, is now available to watch digitally from today and Tripwire’s editor-in-chief Joel Meadows takes another look at the film…
Casino
Director: Martin Scorsese
Stars: Robert De Niro, Sharon Stone, Joe Pesci, James Woods
The year was 1995 and five years had elapsed since director Martin Scorsese had made his acclaimed Goodfellas gangster drama. Scorsese had tried something totally different with the stately Edith Wharton adaptation The Age Of Innocence but the temptation to return to the criminal demi monde proved too much for him to resist. Now it’s on streaming which offers viewers a brand new opportunity to immerse themselves in a film that, 28 years on, hasn’t lost any of its cinematic impact or heft.
The director reunited with screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi who he collaborated with on Goodfellas five years previously for Casino, which sees the return of Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci once again. DeNiro plays Jewish gangster Sam “Ace” Rothstein, a man who is put in charge of Las Vegas casino The Tangiers while Pesci, not exactly playing against type, is Nicky Sanatoro, a hot-headed psychopath and made man. It isn’t the first time that DeNiro has played a Jewish gangster as he did that earlier in his career in Sergio Leone’s sprawling Once Upon A Time In America back in 1980. Unlike Jimmy Conway, Rothstein may be a gangster but he isn’t an unreasonable one so here he offers the human side of the criminal underworld. Rothstein has been sent to Las Vegas to keep the teamsters in check by his mafia overlords but two things prove to be his undoing: one is his friend, Nicky, who uses violence as his currency and to rise through the ranks, and the other is the woman he falls for who becomes his wife Ginger (Sharon Stone), a woman with a heart colder than the dice and cards that she has used to hustle her way through Sin City’s gambling tables.
Goodfellas was a very elegant looking film but with Casino, Scorsese took things to a whole other level. Cinematically speaking, the visual élan on display here by cinematographer Robert Richardson and the production design of Scorsese’s regular partner-in-crime Dante Ferretti means that Casino is one of the most gorgeous portrayals of such an ugly and visceral world. Casino is a three hander with DeNiro, Pesci and Stone offering a particularly degraded and ultimately doomed love triangle between the trio. DeNiro looks cooler than he ever has done before while there is an almost pre-ternatural malevolence to Pesci’s onscreen persona. Stone is also excellent here as the magnetic but incredibly flawed Ginger, a woman who lives for the grift who is inexorably drawn back to her previous life with her degenerate pimp Lester Diamond, played so wonderfully sleazily by James Woods. The decaying orbit of her existence means that the viewer knows that she is not destined for an upbeat conclusion to her life.
The supporting cast here is also exceptional as you would be expect from Scorsese with Don Rickles as Rothstein’s lieutenant Billy Sherbert and Frank Vincent as mob enforcer Frank Marino, who would go on to make Tony Soprano’s life a living hell in the HBO gangster show a number of years later, just two of the standout performances from the rest of the dramatis personae.
If the onscreen elegance is amped up from Goodfellas, then so is the casual violence. Casino is a more unflinchingly brutal than its progenitor and when Nicky meets his eventual end out in the desert with his brother Dominic, Scorsese pulls no punches when he shows the viewer the final fate of this unhinged psychopath.
Jimmy Conway in Goodfellas was a street thug who moved up through the ranks while Rothstein is the ultimate gambler, a man whose nous and savvy when it comes to cards and horse racing is impeccable. He is happy to bend the rules in the name of money but not to shatter them. He manages to leave Las Vegas unscathed unlike Nicky and Ginger.
The chemistry between DeNiro, Pesci and Stone is what elevates this film. Stone was never better than she was here and the dynamic between DeNiro and Pesci is electrifying at times. Casino was a spiritual success to Goodfellas and it showed that Scorsese hadn’t quite finished playing in the bloody, dirty gangster sandbox yet.
If you have enjoyed watching people gamble onscreen then you can try Arabic roulette for yourself online.
JOEL MEADOWS
Watch Casino digitally now here in the UK
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/video/detail/0GPAHQPWJ91GKPGLJ4YHWF127N/ref=atv_pr_sw_sc?tag=just016-21
Here’s a clip from the film
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