A Fitting Coda

Rating: 10/10 (23 October 2000)

The feeling of revisited material notwithstanding, Martin Scorsese's close of his New Mafia trilogy ("Main Streets" and "GoodFellas" were the first two chapters) is striking for its last-gasp desperation and depletion: when it runs out of steam it simply expires--there's nothing left. The expulsion of the Mob from Las Vegas also serves to reinforce Scorsese's recurring themes of redemption and ascension; here both are mutually exclusive and to be redeemed and delivered from hell means an existence in purgatory. (Heaven, meanwhile, is reserved for the blue-haired innocents who have become the guests of the corporations that have purged Vegas from sin.) By the time it's over, Scorsese seems exhausted; he doesn't have anything left to say on the subject and it looks doubtful he ever will. Still, if he never makes another masterpiece, this will be a fitting coda on a remarkable subject.