It sucks

Rating: 1/10 (6 January 2007)

I decided to give Scorsese one last chance (I'm now trying to erase the entire film from my mind, and Mr. Scorsese's name, as well). I understand he's supposed to be a great director and that the acting is supposed to be great (I just don't see it - and I tried *very* hard to see good things in this film. I paid to rent it, I wanted to like it. How can someone ruin a movie about my favorite themes - Vegas and the mob? I mean, I'll watch practically anything about this topic.
This movie's pacing is arbitrary and amateurish. Scorsese knows he has to provide some gruesome violence at some point - we were checking the time of this flick at 1 hour, wondering when it would *ever* be over. I figured then that the violence would be immediate, gratuitous and upcoming - merely because it had to be there, to keep anyone watching. So there it was. A TV-style shoot-out, followed by torture scene (don't worry, I'm not spoiling much) that's filmed with overly artsy and arbitrary camera angles. I've never seen a film that relied so heavily on narration. What was Scorsese thinking? That he'd get remembered for having the most over-narrated film in world history? There are TWO overly wordy narrators, but you can't make up for the lack of cinematic action and believability on the screen - unless you are watching this during a cocktail party or something. Or you really like movies that don't require a strong plot, and blast you occasionally with set decor or violence.
The sets are great - that's what kept me going through the movie, but set design and production design do not a great film make. He should have DeNiro be naked to provide interest, though. DeNiro does his obligatory pug-dog face, with the wrinkled forehead way too much, and that bobbing and swaying thing where he crosses his arms and looks intense way too much.
The side characters are overwrought and stupidly dressed (that huge bolo turquoise guy is an example). Once again, Scorsese is like a cartoonist that hates cartoons. He can't even put meaningful props around the set, they appear to be symbolic (but apparently are not) and he shows us all kinds of things that never come into play (that's just bad directing - very B movie, actually). I guess I can see how a movie like this one (cartoony) can be popular, though - I just can't handle the shifts in tone and pacing throughout the flick. There are too many scenes where the frame is tilted, comic book style, that have NO comic book content - and where in addition the acting and dialog are overshadowed by set decor or costume - and the dialog/events do not move the movie forward. Why do that? And why then force so much narration (in a boring tone, mostly from DeNiro) onto the audience? I love B movies, and was prepared to view this entry as Scorsese's attempt to make one, to forgive him all the other directorial excesses he's been guilty of. If he had done that - at all, I would have liked it. Or if we'd seen naked Sharon Stone (that's how bad this was - I was praying for Sharon to lose her panties in that one scene, or at least give DeNiro a blow job, but no - nothing).
The Italian mobsters and their food look fake and last minutey - as though someone composed those scenes on a Sunday morning, with a hangover, using the most obvious and basic film student style composition techniques and set pieces. Even the decor failed at many points - and it didn't have to.
Oh, and by the way, Martin, if you're reading (which I doubt - if I had made this film, I'd never read anything critical about it, I'd never want to remember I'd made it) - merely sticking old slot machines in little trios on the floor here and there to denote "basement" doesn't work. Neither does using geometric window patterns or Renaissance colors to provide visual distraction to make plot elements loom large when in fact, it's just standard stuff. Watch a Tarantino movie, will ya?