“On Nov. 22, 1995, Universal released A Martin Scorsese Picture, as the Las Vegas epic Casino hit theaters. Starring Robert De Niro, Sharon Stone and Joe Pesci, the feature went on to gross $115 million globally in its theatrical run and nabbed a leading actress Oscar nomination for Stone. The Hollywood Reporter’s original review is”, — write: www.hollywoodreporter.com
Two guys from back East ride into a never-sleeping desert town looking to strike gold. In this case, the gold is not in them thar hills but in the wide-opening gaming tables of Las Vegas. With two of his “goodfellas,” Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci, director Martin Scorsese rolls a big winner, commercially and aesthetically, with Casino.
Although Scorsese’s masterful GoodFellas 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.
Casino is a scorching, gripping depiction of the underside of the American Dream, fascinating even to us nickel-slot types. It’s also excruciatingly violent, unabashedly nostalgic and coursed through with enough combustible drama to stake three mob movies.
With 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.
Now 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 — fenced off in Kansas City by the FBI — and the weekly bagload of skim money keeps the Great Plains goodfellas in chipper spirits.
Sam runs a neat operation, and he always likes the house odds. He doesn’t like long shots or jokers in the deck. Unfortunately for Sam, his real-life joker arrives in the squat persona of longtime chum Nicky Santoro (Pesci), a volcanic goombah who reasons that Las Vegas was created for one reason, for him to rob.
This 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’s hot-tempered ways will invariably bring on the heat.
While Sam’s 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’s 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.
With a friend like Nicky and a wife like Ginger, Sam doesn’t need any enemies. But they come in spades as a result of his personal fold.
As they did in GoodFellasNicholas 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.
It’s obvious that Scorsese feels more affection for that frontier era of Las Vegas over today’s corporate-controlled, theme park “City of Sin.” (Will Scorsese appreciate the irony when MCA/Universal adds it to the tour?) Scorsese’s 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.
A restrained De Niro is the embodiment of a casino king who is undone by his obsessive nature, a professional asset but a personal debt. Pesci is, once again, terrific as a short-fuse thug, an engaging or loathsome loose cannon with some misconnected wires.
The film’s 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.
Playing the lounge lizards, slotwads, goombahs and corrupt-tos, the supporting cast members are terrific. That includes in particular, Don Rickles as an oily floor manager, Dick Smothers as a hypocritical politician, James Woods as a puke-ish parasite and, once again, Scorsese’s mother, Catherine Scorsese, as a take-no-guff, see-no-evil mama familias.
Technical contributions are aces: Robert Richardson’s garish but subdued lighting clues us to the malevolence beneath the glitter, while Thelma Schoonmaker Powell’s editing perfectly punctuates the frenzy. An eclectic stack of pop songs, highlighted by some blistering early Stones, juice this high-quality roller. — Duane Byrge, originally published on Nov. 17, 1995.