Too violent and too long

Rating: 6/10 (30 November 1998)

Well - Martin Scorsese likes to make very violent movies (Goodfellas, Raging Bull, Cape Fear, etc.) but does he need to do it for any purpose. Why can't he just cut out some of the violent scenes in Casino and reduce the movie to a 2 hour show. After all - I got the picture of a very violent environment after the tenth bullet in the head. I do not need to see every killing (a lot) in the story - I do not need to see people getting tortured, burried alive and hit with baseball bats all the time. Even when characters of secondary importance to the story got wacked we saw it all.
And the language is very abusive. I don't think Joe Pesci's character spoke a sentence in the whole movie without saying the f-word. Does it have to be that way.
Not for me. I can tolerate violence and abusive language, but only if it is used to describe the environment or is important to the story. Martin Scorsese uses these two things in Casino only to amuse the audience.
Guess what - I'm not amused.
I rank this movie as 6 of 10. The reason for the high score is the - after all - exciting story and a very good performance by Robert de Niro.