not the worst, not the best

Rating: 7/10 (9 May 2006)

Ehh. Everybody compares this movie to Goodfellas (which was one of the most horrendous movies I've seen that wasn't outright 'bad') but in truth it was much better. It was much worse than what Scorcese is capable of at the top of his game, however, which makes it watchable. Dancing around the theme of redemption, like so many Scorcese films, it tells of Ace Rothstein (Robert De Niro), a crook trying to redeem himself and go straight, and who ends up running a fancy casino. Awesome, right? Wrong. He falls in love with a hooker (Ginger), marries her, and then his best friend Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci, playing a trigger-happy psycho for once!) comes and wants his share of what Vegas has to offer. Except Nicky's not even trying to go straight. Ginger ends up an abusive, cheating junkie bitch on wheels, and Nicky, by virtue of his relations with Ace, ends up messing Ace's life up in a big way. A main theme in this movie is trust - Ace begins with saying there can be no love without trust, and by the end it turns out Ace shouldn't have trusted anybody. Robert De Niro gave a pretty good performance - nothing compared, of course, to Taxi Driver, The Deer Hunter, or The King of Comedy - but he is from head to toe a fundamentally good guy with his head on right, who in fact tends to live too much in his head until he crashes for Ginger. He recovers quickly enough, though, and although he isn't perfect, we want him to win. One of the interesting points of the performance is that even though Ace is so logical and tough, when he gets hurt it's unbearable. Joe Pesci was OK, nothing compared to his performance in Raging Bull of course, and while I'm tempted to say Sharon Stone was awful she wasn't that bad. In my opinion Scorcese was a lot better before all the expensive sets and frou-frou camera-work. It just gets in the way of his message. I guess ultimately it's about how your life adds up at the end of the day, and how you can escape your past. It's got a very Catholic tone to it with respect to absolution - it seems to convey the thought that if you're just sorry enough for your sins, everything will work out.