Scorcese repeats many ideas of GOODFELLAS... CASINO is a far cry!

Rating: 3/10 (7 August 2017)

The only thing that kept me watching this movie was to learn what happened to the character played by de Niro, apparently blown up by a car bomb at the beginning.
As in GOOODFELLAS, there is voice-over narration, this time by de Niro and Pesci (Ray Liotta was the narrator in the former film), but it is nowhere near as effective, and often provides unnecessary, even distracting asides, that only further lengthen a film that could easily have done with 30 minutes less.
Curiously enough, GOODFELLAS also had de Niro and Pesci in the cast, led by a highly inspired Liotta, but the only performance in CASINO worthy of any mention is that of Sharon Stone, who portrays a truly repellent character (the incident where she binds up her daughter and confines her to a cupboard is a bolt from the blue and struck me as unconvincing, perhaps because nothing in her actions toward her child suggest anything so excessive). She is very convincing, however, in her descent into drugs and her relationship with her pimp, the "real" love in her life, as opposed to the source of wealth that de Niro represents to her.
Pesci reprises his exceedingly violent character of GOODFELLAS and kills people as routinely as one would flies. This time, however, he is less credible because he is reportedly clever enough to take over the running of murky business from other ruthless criminals, but then commits excesses so stupid as to make suspension of disbelief impossible. His affair with Stone is also difficult to swallow. I could accept a blow job or one-off sex because she is too drugged up to reason it out, but surely he knows that de Niro will not tolerate it, and he is just too flippant about it. Ultimately, his character is just not rounded enough to stand, and so wayward as to become confusing, annoying, and ultimately lose the viewer's interest.
The character played by de Niro is a very odd customer indeed, and the actor's talent is sadly wasted in a part much too ambiguous for me to enjoy. He wants to go clean but stupidly allows ultra-violent chum, Pesci, to join his casino and childishly believes Pesci's promises of good behavior and compliance with the "legit" nature of the casino operation. Even harder to swallow is that he should entrust the key to his fortune to Stone, even after he finds her cuddling her up to her pimp again. De Niro seems rather unsure about the role, too. I spent the whole movie waiting for the character to do something but ultimately he accepts everything like the Good Samaritan: he takes in dangerman Pesci, marries pimp Woods-infatuated Stone, has a distant relationship with his daughter that unexpectedly turns into something closer, loses half of his fortune without a whimper when he has seemed money-driven from the start, and is just too polite and quiet to convince me that I haven't wasted close on three hours watching purposeless characters going nowhere.
Photography is competent, somewhat reminiscent of GOODFELLAS but less inspired.
Direction is very disappointing, especially in light of the standards set by Scorcese in TAXI DRIVER and GOODFELLAS.