Not So GoodFellas

Rating: 2/10 (13 December 2011)

During the first part, as we learn the ins and outs of a 1970s and '80s Las Vegas casino taking us so close to the mechanics of the operation we feel part of the roulette table or the dice rolling across... is intentionally created in the same fashion director Martin Scorsese showed us the mob's operation in GOODFELLAS.
But then something happens, or stops happening, or both.
The main character, Sam "Ace" Rothstein, played by Robert DeNiro, is a man of mind, not action. He's to gambling what Scorsese is to directing a natural and the casino itself becomes an absorbing character: we feel pulse of the tables and machines, and the men behind the scenes, keeping the moneymaking beast alive while protecting her from cheaters, con artists, and crooked politicians.
Enter Joe Pesci as Nicky, Rothstein's childhood friend: the muscle who's cocky, dangerous, and ultimately undependable. And the flavor of the month, Sharon Stone, as Sam's trophy girlfriend turned wife, Ginger, who becomes the wormed apple of his eye – and soon, for a man who seemed infallible, nothing matters but trusting a woman who repeatedly warned him not to. The movie hits a wall with the escalating relationship between Sam and Ginger, but it was faltering beforehand – DeNiro, Pesci, and some of the other shady characters, although colorful and formidable, aren't very interesting nor are they people to care about – unlike GOODFELLAS, RAGING BULL, or TAXI DRIVER, they all seem more written than real.
And the duel-narration, beautifully wielded in GOODFELLAS between Ray Liotta and Lorraine Bracco, works and it doesn't: DeNiro's metronomic account of the proceedings is fine in the beginning, giving us a firsthand account of how the casino runs from the inside, it becomes a rambling safety net for the lack of a streamlined plot: especially when his business luck turns sour. While Joe Pesci's counterpoint is completely unnecessary, sounding like a goon version of Bugs Bunny, filling us with details better left for the audience to figure on their own.
And the last half runs itself completely ragged: juggling a doomed love story straight out of a nighttime soap with Ace and Nicky's doomed friendship that meanders to a predictably violent conclusion (and they never seemed that tight to begin with for an unraveling to really matter).
If Scorsese and scriptwriter Nicholas Pillegi stuck closer to the Casino, perhaps the film, and characters, might have had more purpose. What we're left with is too much style without substance. So to pay homage to vice presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen's comment to Dan Quayle's comparison of Jack Kennedy: "I saw Goodfellas. I know Goodfellas. You, Casino, are NO Goodfellas."
And (spoiler alert) has there ever been a character more deserving a bloody death than James Wood's pimp/hustler who not only repeatedly steals Stone from DeNiro, but kidnaps, and continually threatens, his daughter? While we witness the immense, overboard bloodshed of everyone else, James comes out with a few bruises. What the hell were they thinking?!
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