Okay, I cheated. I've already seen Casino, but it's been so long since I've last seen it and it just happened to be playing on TV. At first, I just wanted to watch bits and pieces but how could I possibly change the channel on my favorite Martin Scorsese movie? Before I knew it, three hours later it was all over and thirty minutes after that I was still thinking about it. I figured it deserved its own blog entry.
Casino may very well be the first mobster movie I've ever seen, at least the one that I remember the most as a kid. I didn't watch Goodfellas until college. There was never a copy of The Godfather in my household so I only watched bits and pieces of it whenever it was on TV. It's possible I didn't see it until late in high school. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I still have not seen Scarface in its entirety despite my affinity for rap music. It was Casino that brought me to the world of the grown ups so it holds a special place in my heart. While it's not as good as Scorsese's other classic crime dramas, it's every bit as enthralling and captivating. And it's about Las Vegas and gambling. As someone who gambles for a living, how could i not be attracted to this film?!
I love the behind the scenes storytelling that goes on in Casino, everything from the unsavory mobsters that run the strip, the money grabbing schemes, the struggle for power, how casinos are run and all the episodic side stories that make Las Vegas look like the wild west. And before the big corporations took over, Vegas was like the wild west. When I say I play poker for a living, people are genuinely concerned for me, envisioning gangsters and loan sharks and all sorts of bad men around me. If this was the 1970's when the Chicago Outfit or Michael Corleone was in control or with guys like Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci) running around, I'd be a little worried too. Luckily, times are a little tamer these days.
Above all, I love the larger than life characters in this film which is loosely based on the lives of Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal, who secretly ran the casinos behind the scenes for the mob, and Tony "The Ant" Spilotro, a top level enforcer. Robert De Niro plays Sam "Ace" Rothstein based on Rosenthal. He is a professional gambler who knows all the angles and all the smart bets and is asked to come to Vegas to run the gambling operations. Joe Pesci plays Nicky Santoro based on Spilotro, a childhood friend of Rothstein and pure muscle meant to ensure the mob is getting their cut and that nobody messes with it. The entire movie is driven by these two characters and both just kill it. De Niro is De Niro, well at least before he started to do stuff like The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle. Ace is cool, suave and smart. Pesci on the other hand just owns the screen with his portrayal as Nicky. For as smooth and controlled Ace is, Nicky is a complete animal. Nicky Santoro makes Tommy DeVito (Goodfellas reference) look like a choir boy. He is tough and a little crazy, which makes him extremely dangerous and downright scary. If you could encapsulate all the qualities of a stereotypical wise guy, you wouldn't have to look much further than Pesci's portrayal of Nicky. I don't think anybody in the business can say the phrase "mother f*cker" better than Pesci.
These two are polar opposites yet good friends. Much of the inevitable conflicts however come from their differences. While Ace works for the mob, he isn't really a mobster. In his heart, he is a professional gambler, bookkeeper, gaming exec what have you. All the stuff that was illegal back home, he can do out in the open completely legal in Vegas. Nothing about what Nicky does can ever be legal anywhere. As Avon Barksdale says in The Wire, "I'm just a gangster I suppose." Ace tries to do his own thing while Nicky does his, but in the backdrop is always the big bosses back home who demand their cut and can see their influence slowly slip away out in Vegas.
The film is narrated by both Ace and Nicky almost in an almost nostalgic manner, reminiscing on the good old days of Vegas, before as Ace puts it, it turned into Disneyland. Watching the film was almost like watching a documentary. A wildly dark and twisted, but wonderfully informative documentary.
I love Scorsese's unique style. Somehow he manages to film violence and adult subject matter in such a casual attitude without diminishing it. This is especially true in the scene in Goodfellas when a series of hits are seen. This talent came from his upbringing in rough neighborhoods. I suppose his philosophy is that the best way to record these elements is to just observe them.
Note: When this film was first released, it set the record for most F-bombs in cinematic history. I'd guess 1/2 of all the f*cks spoken were from Pesci alone.
Grade: A
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