A stand-alone classic (spoilers)

Rating: Null/10 (21 June 2006)

Casino is often regarded as a second-rate Goodfellas. It's seen as a bloated sequel to Scorsese's gangster masterpiece. But personally, I think it's just as good as its predecessor. It's an amazing film.
However, I can kind of see where people are coming from when they criticise it. Yes, it's excessively violent. Yes, it's bloated. Yes, Pesci plays a character similar to the one he played in Goodfellas. And looking at individual scenes you can make comparisons between the two films: Sam (De Niro) falling for Ginger (Stone) is remarkably similar to the scene where Henry Hill falls in love with Karen after she screams at him at the cab stand, Nicky (Pesci) beating a man with a pen can be linked back to Tommy beating Billy Batts, and the final half an hour where Sam is battling with his wife is filmed in the same frenzy as the day of Henry Hill's arrest. But rather than hurt the film, the familiarity works in its favour. After all, the films both deal with the same world. Therefore, if you've seen Goodfellas, you can plug straight into Casino. But while Goodfellas was about the street level Mafioso, Casino goes one step higher. It's about a more powerful branch of the Mafia. And because the film is dealing with Las Vegas, a city that is loud, brash and devoted entirely to money, it's appropriate that the film is bloated and over the top. Vegas is no place for restraint.
The film starts with Sam being blown up. Then the titles kick in and Sam spirals through a neon hell. But rather than see Las Vegas as an ugly, unnatural city, the city is described as paradise on Earth. And really for someone that loves money, someone that is devoted entirely to the accumulation of wealth, it is indeed paradise. And there's a fantastic shot at the beginning where you see Vegas at night through the clouds. As far as Sam's concerned he's looking down on an Earthly heaven. In this place anything is possible. And continuing the operatic theme of the film, the gangsters in Chicago, the guys who have entrusted Sam with the Tangiers casino, are described as gods  and with the way the sequence is filmed they could be looking down from Mount Olympus.
But although the film starts as a dream it eventually becomes a nightmare. And of course, money, sex and drugs are the corrupting influences. But as grim and violent as the film is, it's also very funny. I mean, Pesci as Nicky, whether intended or not, is a laugh riot. I could just listen to the helium-powered Lilliputian actor rant and rave all day. One of my favourite scenes has to be when he confronts Sam in the desert. It's beautifully built up as a dangerous showdown  Sam looks for holes in the desert and then Nicky drives through the dust (there's a wonderful shot of Nicky's dust trail reflected in Sam's sunglasses)  but once Pesci begins mouthing off, I can only smile. "You Jew mother******, you!" Another great Pesci scene is when he puts someone's head in a vice. Again the content is less than savoury, and Pesci is entirely convincing as a psychopath ("Don't make me be a bad guy," he says with a wonderful sense of the absurd), but Pesci's screaming fills me with joy. "Charlie M? You made me pop your f****** eye out of your head to protect that piece of s***? Charlie M? You dumb mother******!" And then there's the scene where Nicky is talking to some showgirl. He's talking about food (pounding pink veal, no less) and then once he's led her into his car, he applies pressure to back of the woman's cranium and lies back in the time-honoured way that men do when they receive blow-jobs in movies (there's a similar moment later with Pesci and Stone, which also has me laughing, such is the way the scene begins with the characters bitching about Sam and then descends into rampant horniness). But Pesci has even more great moments: the bit where he insults the dealer, the way he intimidates a banker, the stabbing with a pen and the line "Peek-a-boo, you f***s, you". Oh, and there's also the bit where he murders one of the casino's business partners. What I love about the scene is the way that Pesci laughs as he narrates the killing "the boys decided to settle out of court." It really shouldn't be funny, it shouldn't amuse you to see someone treat life so casually, but that's one of the strengths of the film: the way it refuses to take a moral stance; Pesci's character gets a kick out of the killing, so that's the way it's portrayed.
But of course, a scene that isn't funny is Nicky's killing. Although having said that, I do get a chuckle out of the way that Nicky's narration is interrupted when Frank Vincent hits him. But the beating is incredibly brutal and actually does something rather extraordinary and makes you feel a small measure of sympathy for Pesci's character, especially when he's imploring his friends to stop beating his brother.
And it's also quite extraordinary that the film makes you feel a little something for Ginger (Stone is excellent). After all, by the end she's a completely repugnant character  she even does coke in front of her daughter. But rather than being just a bad person, she's portrayed as someone who has been messed up by Las Vegas and her relationships. Therefore, although it's easy to hate her actions, it's harder to hate her as a person.
And it's the relationship between Sam and Ginger that gives the film its heart. Sure Pesci's antics are the most entertaining, but buried beneath the violence and the squeaky cursing, you have a perverse love story, and a very affecting one at that.