The Scorsese spell...

Rating: 9/10 (10 March 2008)

During its first forty minutes, Martin Scorsese's "Casino" is pure narration, except for little spoken moments. It's a risky move, but then Marty has always been risky, and this movie may be the ultimate example to prove it. Closing in at three hours duration time, it takes its characters on a roller-coaster ride that not everyone might appreciate; from the advantages of recurrent fortune to the regular Scorsese tragedy.That's cutting it short, because there's a lot in the middle, but without telling you 'what' exactly goes on in "Casino", I'll tell you how you can approach it as a film.
When Sam Rothstein (Robert De Niro) is put in charge of the Tangiers Casino in Las Vegas, he sees it as the perfect chance to erase the obscure past we call carry with us. However, his best friend Nicky (Joe Pesci) is not fond of legitimacy; and when he settles in Vegas to protect him, it's not long until he starts doing some business of his own.
As Nicky himself puts it: "The dollarÂ…Always the dollar". But if we go back, Nicky also expresses at the beginning: "It was perfect. Sam was the perfect guy to run the casino and he had me, his best friend, and Ginger, the woman he loved". We see Ginger (a monumental Sharon Stone) at first as Sam sees her, a light in the middle of the room (there's one scene where this translates literally in images, with Robert Richardson's cinematography-that contains a wonderful use of light-putting the rest of the room in a mild darkness, while De Niro stands in awe as Stone walks and works the room accompanied by a constant light), but she is actually the most complex character of the film.
If you approach "Casino" as a movie to see the inside movement of the casino business and its ups and downs (a subject the film manages perfectly), you may not notice the complexity of Stone's character and her performance. But then, if you view the film as the study of the consequences of an arranged marriage and life, you might miss the best element of the film: Joe Pesci's creation of Nicky; something that's indeed better than his work in "Goodfellas".
Ultimately, you may choose to take "Casino" as the story of a long-time friendship and the betrayals that come with the years because people change and want different things from life. Again, this (as the marriage thing) is a subject that the film dominates. That's how brilliant Nicholas Pilleggi's-together with Scorsese-adaptation of his own book is; it covers everything with every detail. They did the same thing with "Goodfellas" and it was so rich that you could get lost in the 'mafia' universe.
Here, as in "Goodfelas" (both film share many similarities, more than anything in the ongoing decay of certain characters and images that seem obvious copies from the 1990 film and speak by themselves, about how great both movies are and that these similarities don't change that fact at all), you have to try to follow every plot line in order to witness every scene exactly as what it means in the movie.
It's the only way you'll enjoy the many conversations between Sam and Nick that lie between the best of the film and, besides showing that De Niro is the best when it comes to calming someone down and/or persuading him to make another decision; but Pesci is better because his stubbornness allows him to evade discussions and therefore cause the other more trouble (also that both know each other by heart so the work together is pure pleasure), are crucial to its development.
The narration comes and goes during the film, in present or past time, generating more confusion for the viewer. This is all after the first hour and a half, and if you're not hypnotized by the film's spell at that point, something must be wrong. Is the movie too long? Yes, if the spell didn't work on you; but if you're already connected with the characters and don't want to get out, it makes no difference if it lasts three or five hours.