Prospects of enjoying "Casino" : 80 out of 100 ....

Rating: 8/10 (22 May 2011)

As an exhilarating immersion in the titular business, the first act is probably the greatest from any Scorsese's film. Marty plunges us into Sam "Ace" Rothstein's universe through a hypnotic flamboyance, working like a reminiscence of another Gangster classic, "Scarface"; and Robert De Niro is as charismatic and respectable as ever. I wanted to be this "Ace", this manager whose infallible competence in gambling, betting and defining odds made it sound like an exact science. The opening is about a competence, and boy, how refreshing it was to see in a Marty's film, a man who loves his profession, and who's not a gangster. This part is the reason why I like and respect "Casino" as a cinematic achievement. And Marty's direction deserved an Oscar nod, if only for this moment where Ace tries to find out how some customers cheat.
This part absorbs me so much I always wish it would never end. But you can't expect from a Scorsese film to avoid the cherished theme of guilt, and no guilt without a mistake. So, we wait for it to come, remembering the very first lines wondering how this could have gone wrong? "Ace" was the Tangiers' undisputed boss, protected by the mob 'back home', who controlled the casino through the notoriously corrupted (at least in mafia films) teamsters' union. Plus, "Ace" had a feared bodyguard, the psychopathic Nicky Santoro, Joe Pesci in a performance that would have been more impacting if it hadn't been preceded by Tommy De Vito. In fact, the whole movie has a deja-vu feeling due to its plot's similarity with "Goodfellas" but this wasn't a problem for me.
The problem was the hypocrisy of the whole "how things could have gone wrong". You expect the movie to introduce it smoothly while in fact, as soon as it starts going wrong, the whole narrative, is structured by a series of mistakes. Nicky was at least honest and explicit about his intentions in Las Vegas. He wanted to squeeze the town until the last drop. He wanted the big thing, and no one to step him over, he didn't care about warnings, about his bosses' instructions, he was in a gangster's oasis in the middle of nowhere, and Ace trying to reason him was as laughable as his attempt to conquer Ginger's heart. Nicky's 'pen in the neck' was a premonition of him being the pain in the ass. But still, he was the guy whose friendship prevented Sam to act against him, like Charlie and Johnny Boy in "Mean Streets". One weakness, I could have handled; but another was one too much, and I'm talking of Ginger, Sharon Stone in her Oscar nominated role.
In fact, even Ginger's entrance bothered me, because Marty and Bobby portrayed Sam as a meticulous man who means business and tolerates absolutely no imperfection. So, I didn't buy that he would let a woman throw the chips in the air like this, even for a 'love at first sight' moment, I thought the movie immediately lost its gripping realism, and it's one of the few weaknesses I noticed, after the dummy in the car's explosion and before Anna Scott's strangely blood-less murder. I couldn't believe the guy who told the croupier to perfectly align the chips, or the cook to keep the same quantity of blueberries in the muffins would let this happen. Well, let's concede that it was love, and Bobby played perfectly the part of a man who wants a desirable blonde so much (indeed, she was beautiful) that he didn't care about being loved. And we understand this would be his downfall. But it just started the very day of their marriage, when she was calling her ex-pimp, James Woods as a believable scumbag named Lester. Couldn't "Ace" get the point?
That's "Casino"'s problem: problems come too early, we know it will be an infernal spiral until a bloody climax would purge out the bad blood, it's just a matter of time before it'll explode, before Sam beats the hell out of Ginger, before Nicky gets his comeuppance etc. Basically, "Casino" is about people wondering how they screwed up, while they had it coming from the start. It's about a situation with people being their own liabilities and the icing on the cake was the disturbing sex moment between Nicky and Ginger. I wouldn't care if "Casino" was at least a half-hour shorter, but it spans too much time on the 'problems' sequence, it gets redundant and annoying, too much shouting, arguing and of course narrating. Hell, at one point even Nicky's sidekick, Frank Vincent as the namesake Marino, started doing voice-over. The movie reached an extraordinary level of noisiness where even the soundtrack got in my nerves, the part with Ginger and Lester and the "Can't Live if Living is Without You" song was annoyance at its peak before Marty finally redeemed the film.
At the end, "Casino" finally reconciles with the idea that we're watching a Gangster film, and that all this mess must come to an end now, and all the protagonists of this tragicomedy must meet their maker, in the most gruesome way if possible. And I can't go on without mentioning that particularly gruesome and disturbing scene, where Nicky witnesses the death of his brother Dominick before receiving the same batting treatment from Marino and the gang. "Billy Batts' revenge" broke both Nicky's bones and my heart, and his crying followed by a bloody face half-breathing before covered by sand, will haunt me forever.
"Casino" starts and ends with intensity, but in-between  well, it's like starting a Texas Holdem game, with a pair in your hands, expecting to win with two pairs, or a three of a kind, but at the end, you just win because all the players folded. Shorter would have been better with less style and more substance.
And that's that.