Casino (2006, HD DVD)

When you love someone, you've gotta trust them. There's no other way. You've got to give them the key to everything that's yours. Otherwise, what's the point? And, for a while...I believed that's the kind of love I had.

- Sam Ace Rothstein, Casino

In one of cinema s most spectacular opening scenes, Sam Ace Rothstein (Robert de Niro) is heard in a voice-over as he leaves a restaurant, gets behind the wheel of an American car circa 1980, and turns the key. Then, BOOM! A stunningly magnificent sequence unfolds to the majestic music of St Matthew Passion by J. S. Bach, which thunders forth like a soundtrack to the Apocalypse. Opening credits appear against a glowing, flashing montage of bright neon lights.

Once over the initial shock of that opening scene, a poignancy quickly falls upon Rothstein s words, and we already feel some sympathy for him even if we ve yet to learn of his story of how matters came to such a pass.

And it s a long story - three hours worth. Director Martin Scorsese s Casino (1995) portrays the city of Las Vegas before it got prettied up and Disneyfied for the whole family, in the good old days for mobsters when they ran the immensely lucrative gambling palaces, and where greed, deception, corruption and murder ran rampant. Based on the simultaneously written book, Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas , by Nicholas Pileggi (who also wrote Wise Guy upon which Mr Scorsese s Goodfellas was based), the book evolved concurrently with the film, as Mr Scorsese and Mr Pileggi worked on both the screenplay and book through the shoot.

The real-life Las Vegas personage named Frank Lefty Rosenthal becomes the film s Sam Ace Rothstein, and his screen wife is Ginger McKenna (Sharon Stone), representing Frank s wife, Geri. Sam s mobster friend from childhood, Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci) is the book s Anthony Spilotro from Back Home , and completes the trio of protagonists.

Casino reprises much of the world of Mr Scorsese s previous gangster film, Goodfellas . Goodfellas left one breathless with its frenetic pace and episodes of pitch-black humour that made you laugh nervously while watching cringe-worthy scenes of brutal violence. These same mobsters populate Casino , wise guys with good hearts when it comes to their children and mothers, who are also repulsive, ruthless monsters when it comes to the business. Viewers not enamoured of Goodfellas would do well to avoid Casino , which can be seen as a sequel of sorts to the earlier film.

Sam Rothstein is a bookie from back home in the Midwest who knows how to pick winners and leaves nothing to chance. He is sent by the Mob to Vegas to run a gambling joint called the Tangiers Hotel and Casino. Rothstein dutifully keeps his nose and fingers clean in Vegas. He runs the daily casino operations exceedingly well which he does without a gambling license since he s had trouble with the law. He has to adopt a variety of job titles (entertainment, or food and beverage, manager) to avoid the license requirement. With no one really keeping tabs on the money flowing into the casinos, the Mob regularly skim off the top of their huge gambling profits and get pure cash unseen by the Internal Revenue Service. Each month, fat suitcases of untaxed cash are personally delivered home by a Mob man.

Sam is at the top of his game and feels so good he thinks he d like to settle down. Enter Ginger McKenna, one the most highly regarded hooker-hustlers in Vegas. She brings in the high rollers and gets them to blow their big bucks at the gambling tables. A riotous scene in which Sam first spots Ginger captures her essence so well. On the arm of another gambler, she surreptitiously slips a few chips into her purse every now and then, and the move doesn t escape the casino s cameras. When she refuses the tiny tip offered by her date, he accuses her of stealing his chips. Irritated, Ginger abruptly tosses several racks of the man s chips in the air, causing general chaos, and consternation in a very flustered old man. Sam Rothstein watches her operate, and is utterly smitten with her gall and her dazzling smile. Soon he s proposing marriage to a somewhat reluctant Ginger. Sam showers her with lots of expensive goodies, even entrusts a part of his life entirely to her. When Sam tries to control Ginger, she bristles and rebels. Her dependence on drugs and liquor worsens. What Sam doggedly refuses to see is that Ginger has been, and still is, a fiercely independent working girl who was pretty successful at her trade.

Not helping things is Ginger s inexplicable attachment to an old pimp-boyfriend-parasite named Lester Diamond (James Woods). When Ginger continues her friendship with Lester, secretly slipping large amounts of cash to him, it becomes one of several thorns in Sam s side, and another cause for the disintegration of Sam and Ginger s marriage.

Nicky Santoro has come to Vegas to watch Sam s back, and take care of the seamy side of business. His working philosophy of facile, unrestricted violence to suit his purposes contrasts with Sam s painstaking efforts to play by the rules, and their liaison will become a problem for Sam. Nicky also decides to engage in brazenly big-time jewellery theft, a racket unbeknownst to his Mob bosses back home. Nicky is a regular sociopathic hoodlum whose volatile temper can be set off by the tiniest irritation, as witnessed in one shockingly graphic scene of sudden violence involving Sam, Nicky, and an unlucky stranger at a bar.

Besides an inside look into the violent, sleaze-laden lives of Sam, Nicky and Ginger, Casino also shows us how things really work (and perhaps still work?) in Las Vegas, a town unusual in that activities considered illegal elsewhere are perfectly legitimate here. Corruption is rife, involving every level of the gambling business down to the valet drivers, as well as the local and state governments. It s simply tolerated, even expected. However, dishonesty in gambling is not taken lightly. When cheats are caught, the penalties applied are not a pretty sight. In the secret and hallowed cash counting room to which Sam Rothstein himself isn t privy, everyone down the line avails himself of a cut, too. When the Mob bosses hear of skimmers skimming off their skim, they re none too happy that they re being robbed of the money they re robbing! It just ain t right!

As with Goodfellas, Casino includes scenes of humour amid the atmosphere replete with tension and violence. One innocently funny sequence again involves the director s mother, Catherine Scorsese. And near the end, there s a sad, absurdist comical scene when a stoned and drunken Ginger goes totally berserk in her rage against Sam, and repeatedly slams her Mercedes Benz 450 SL into the rear of Sam s old American car parked on the driveway. It s hard not to laugh when you see Sam and a friend drive off in a car with a bashed-in back, and chrome strips torn from their moorings clanking noisily on the road, to give chase to Ginger, who s headed straight for the bank in her unscathed Benz.

Robert de Niro does an excellent understated turn as Sam Rothstein, with that tautness and precision of manner that s second nature to him. It also reflects Sam s meticulousness about his dress and tight operating style. His emotions always held in check Sam Rothstein is always in control we glean the inner workings of his mind and heart solely through through his highly efficient, economical speech, and the tiniest glance or stare, with eyes that bore deeply into his subjects. Mr de Niro s Rothstein comes off as sympathetic and in the end, still in love with Ginger despite all the craziness. However, I m still uncertain about its veracity vis- -vis the real-life Rosenthal s relationship with his wife, Geri.

Reprising his Tony de Vito character in Goodfellas Joe Pesci once more scares the hell out of me here with his portrayal of mobster Nicky Santoro. I just might instinctively move away from Mr Pesci if I ever met him in real life (although he was such a benign chump in the hilarious My Cousin Vinny ). Halfway through Casino , I felt I d had enough of crazy Nicky, despite small proofs of human affection in scenes with his son, Nicky, Jr, and Ginger. Mobsters like Nicky are an altogether different breed: they re loving sons and fathers, but otherwise merit the psycho label scary to think about it, but such discordant traits don t stray too far from reality.

However, it s Sharon Stone who remains the film s biggest revelation. As Ginger, she gives the best performance of her career to date: she s bubbly, charming, slick, smooth, tough, controlled but given over to a streak of wildness and unpredictability but she s also heartbreakingly fragile. In one scene, Sam tries to talk a pathetically stuporous Ginger into getting help for her addictions, and after chastising him through a drug-addled haze, she agrees to finally submit to his wishes. Another involves a lot of screaming and sobbing on Ginger s part as she witnesses hoods roughing up Lester Diamond. Yet another is a brief, quiet scene in low light, with Ginger sobbing quietly, persuasively contrite to Sam about her unseemly love affair. Even if we re not entirely on her side, we feel the pain. Her agony comes across as authentically felt, and not mere histrionics.

James Woods shines in the smaller role of Lester Diamond, Ginger s no-good-nick of a boyfriend. Mr Woods reigns in his usual intemperance in favour of a more focused portrayal of the loser card sharp. His manipulative and parasitic character might be unlikeable Lester is a wholly contemptible and pathetic fellow but it s also a thoroughly credible one. It underscores the puzzling attachment of Ginger to one such as him. Mild bits of wackiness figure in throwaway scenes with Lester and Ginger s daughter, Amy (Erika von Tagen), who dislikes him and torments him as only a smart, eight-year-oldish kid would do.

In a few other supporting roles, Mr Scorsese has cast actors against type, and the end results show his wisdom in doing so. Don Rickles, Kevin Pollack and Tom Smothers are excellent their respective parts. Vegas comedian Rickles plays Sam s supportive and serious manager-sidekick, Billy Sherbert. Comic Kevin Pollack is Rothstein s clean front man, Phillip Green, while Dick Smothers of the Smothers Brothers is the corrupt Nevada senator who helps bring down Sam Rothstein. A few Vegas institutions lend authenticity with their cameos, too, including Steve Allen, Jerry Vale and Frankie Avalon.

The near-endless soundtrack strings together songs that play almost throughout the entire film. The songs can give added punch to the on-screen events. To wit: a jaunty and teasing Sixties love tune called Love is Strange by Mickey and Sylvia comes on in the scene in which Sam falls hard for Ginger s antics during the poker chip tantrum. A slew of memorable songs from various eras abound, ranging from Hoagy Carmichael s Stardust , Brenda Lee s I m Sorry and Dean Martin s You re Nobody Till Somebody Loves You , all the way through The Moody Blues Nights in White Satin , Eric Burdon s House of the Rising Sun , the Stones Satisfaction , even Fleetwood Mac s Go Your Own Way .

With Richard Robertson as cinematographer, Mr Scorsese s restless camera gets to glide smoothly through doorways, hallways, between people, even closing in on a face, panning swiftly from side to side to make a point, or freezing a scene. The typically Scorsesian, caffeine-fuelled pace of the film (edited by Scorsese regular Thelma Schoonmaker) can leave you tense and antsy, but never, ever bored.

I revelled in the fabulous, colourful costumes of Sam, with Mr de Niro looking the pinnacle of elegance in perfectly tailored suits of aqua, gold, crimson, orange, lavender, etc, sometimes with a shimmering look to the fabric, paired with ties to match. As the wild cat Ginger, Ms Stone remains modelesque in whatever rag she s in, whether it s a bright, multicoloured blouse and bandana, a short gold leather jacket and pants, or skin-tight black leather pants and halter top. She looks especially gorgeous at a formal affair, dressed in a glittering, fitting, gold lam gown that (if I heard right) is said to have weighed 35 pounds!

The way the story unfolds speaks to the film s own unabashed extravagance, with near-continuous voice-overs by Sam, Nicky and Frank (Frank Vincent, of The Sopranos ), one of the mob s fixers/couriers/messengers. Some viewers might find the continuous music and voice-overs, together with the hyperkinetic feel, just a bit much, but all that is precisely what makes Mr Scorsese s films such terrific cinema. Just a word of warning to those who may find such things offensive: actual mobster talk makes very liberal use of the f-word in all its forms and variations, and I do think Casino rivals Scarface (with ex- Godfather player Al Pacino) for most mentions of the word, uttered mostly by Nicky Santoro.

The film celebrates excess in the superabundance of money, power, deception, corruption, as well as the violence in mobster versions of fixing problems and meting out justice and punishment, all taking place against a gaudy background of flashy costumes, and bright and blinking neon lights. Ultimately, the Mob loses it all their best chance at a perfect Paradise when everything in their Vegas world spirals out of control, with Nicky Santoro, most of all, running completely amuck and getting sloppy with his jobs, and Sam trying to play it straight but upsetting the local powers-that-be and losing his legal hold on the Tangiers. Then there s the increasingly untameable tragic figure of Ginger, later lost in a fog of pills and alcohol, who adds insult to injury to Sam by engaging in a particularly hurtful love affair.

I find Casino to be the last, non-commercial masterpiece made by Martin Scorsese before he went Hollywood and did the dull-except-for-Daniel Day Lewis-as-Bill-the-Butcher Gangs of New York (2002), and the glitzy but hollow The Aviator (2004). I just wish he d return to his roots in more authentic, gritty cinema to gift us with something that could be equally grand and impressive as these last two, but with more depth and character. And without Leonardo di Caprio. Or Cameron Diaz. Please !


DVD Notes:

The 2005 10th Anniversary DVD Edition (released June 14, 2005) includes a widescreen film format (the only way to see it, really). The audio track is in Dolby Digital 5.1. Film is rated R, runs to 179 mins.

Special Features include:

Deleted scenes.
Casino: the Story. Behind-the-scenes featurette about the evolution of the script, the book, and Martin Scorsese and Nick Pileggi s collaboration on them.
Casino: the Cast and Characters. Featuring the real-life people on which the film was based, and the casting of each.
Casino: the Look. All about the glittering, colourful d cor and design of the casinos and those gorgeous, sumptuous costumes on Sam Rothstein and Ginger McKenna.
Casino: After the Filming. Post-production, including editing, music and preparing the picture for release in cinemas.
Moments with Martin Scorsese, Sharon Stone, Nick Pileggi et al. Enlightening and interesting Interviews with the same.
Vegas and the Mob. A History Channel feature about the same.
True Crime Authors: Casino with Nicholas Pileggi.

List Price (amazon.com): $22.98
Can be had for much less on amazon itself and elsewhere.