Robert DeNiro Triumphs Again

Rating: Null/10 (9 November 2002)

Robert DeNiro has yet another great role in this 1995 Universal release. He portrays Sam "Ace" Rothstein, a professional gambler who becomes the boss of a mob operated casino in Las Vegas during the 1970's. He gets married to a smart mouthed and money driven casino hustler named Ginger (Sharon Stone) and makes a longtime friend named Nicky (Joe Pesci) his business partner in casino operations and dealings. Nicky is very defensive of Sam and would do anything to help him make money and stay in business. He especially doesn't mind beating bloody pulps out of people who refuse to cooperate with their demands. Sam is a little more restrained and only really cares about making money so he disapproves of Nicky's highly volatile behavior on several occasions. Meanwhile, Ginger just can't seem to leave her days of greed behind and forms an alliance with Nicky and other high rollers in a quest to help her get a huge share of the casino business profits. It's a lengthy film with an abundance of graphic mob violence, drug use, sexual content and some rather colorful profanity but it still ranks as a very high point in recent cinema and a very fitting follow up to "Goodfellas." Director Martin Scorsese follows up on the "Cape Fear" and "The Age Of Innocence" fiascos with a film that finds him very much back in his signature element, the epic crime drama. Nicholas Pileggi, the man who wrote the novel "Wiseguys" that eventually became the film "Goodfellas" once again adapts his novelization stories into film form and just like "Goodfellas", this film is a dramatized and fictionalized account that's modeled after a true story.