Low Life in the High Life

Rating: 7/10 (22 April 2005)

I worked for a Mississippi casino at the time this film hit the big screen. Obviously, there are tremendous differences between Las Vegas casinos of the 1970s and Biloxi casinos of the 1990s--but even so I was stunned by the accuracy with which Scorsese's CASINO nailed the industry and the personalities that inhabit it. From the slick hair and pin stripe suits to the endless profanity to the count room to the surveillance room, CASINO is uncomfortably close to the truth.
Based on the life of 'Lefty' Rosenthal, CASINO offers the story of Las Vegas' last gasp of mob domination before the big corporations began to move in. Robert De Niro is "Ace" Rothstein, a mob-connected gambler who rises to control of one the biggest mob-owned casinos in town--and then sees his control slips away through his misplaced love for beautiful and brazen Vegas hustler Ginger McKenna (Sharon Stone) and his association with gangster Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci.) And when their various activities begin to draw heat on the mob bosses, can murder be far behind? The cast is really top notch. De Niro and Pesci offer memorable performances, as does a superior supporting cast that includes James Woods, Don Rickles, Kevin Pollak, and Melissa Prophet, to name but a few--but the real laurels go to Sharon Stone, who plays out the rise and fall of the glamorous Ginger with surprising skill. But even so, and in spite of its memorable cast, dialogue, plot, and production values, CASINO has a slightly awkward feel to it. Part of the problem is the film's inconsistent reliance on voice-over narration that shifts uneasily between De Niro and Pesci; part of the problem is the film's uneasy shifting between love story and gangster movie. And in the final analysis the film seems overlong.
For all its flaws, CASINO is an extremely watchable, very memorable movie that stands up very well on its own in spite of inevitable comparisons to GOODFELLAS. In passing, I note the DVD package has few extras, and most viewers will be as happy with the VHS version as with the DVD. But be it DVD or VHS, the film is strongly recommended.
Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer