Too Much Expository Narration and "F" Bombs

Rating: 4/10 (18 December 2008)

This movie could have been a very interesting drama about Las Vegas gangsters, but Martin Scorsese ruins it with the film-making technique he used in "Goodfellas": expository narration. It was annoying in "Goodfellas," but is very heavily used here. Instead of letting the action guide the plot, he has characters give background narration for every single point of action in the damned film. You're TOLD rather than SHOWN what happened. If I wanted to be told something, I'd read a book. Movies a re more interesting when character dialogue and action move the plot. Narration slows the movie down to a grinding halt.
Oh, and there's "Casino's" claim to fame: the most uses of the "F" word in an English-language non-documentary film. Every other word is "F" this and "F" that. I know gangsters are tough, macho men who love to speak dirty, but this is way too much. Again, this is where action may have helped to convey the characterization of tough gangsters, rather than the "F" word every second. This film needed better dialogue. "The Godfather" has excellent dialogue, and though there are dirty words, it's balanced out by intelligent writing. "Casino" doesn't have going for it in terms of good writing, unless it's to show that the Vegas mob was run by a bunch of unintelligent morons who can't form a complete sentence without the "F" word.
The acting is extreme and over-the-top. Sharon Stone is less than spectacular as a drug-addled, high-strung moll. She's either laughing or screaming, and nothing more. She chews the scenery like a starving pit bull. De Niro does little but blend into the background. Joe Pesci seems like his SNL caricature, screaming and squeezing heads into vices.
Granted, I'm interested in the history of the Las Vegas mob, and this movie is based on a nonfiction book; but the writing was bad, and the narration device distracted from my enjoyment of the action. I didn't like "Goodfellas," but it was leaps and bounds superior to this dreck. I do not recommend this, except maybe for a rental. Watch the DVD extras that feature an A&E documentary on the real Las Vegas mafia.