Casino (1995)

Casino arrived in cinemas in 1995 as something of a double-edged proposition: another crime epic from Martin Scorsese, reuniting him with Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci barely five years after Goodfellas had redefined the genre. The film is based on the non-fiction book of the same name by Nicholas Pileggi, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Scorsese, and it draws on the real story of Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal, the sports handicapper who ran the Stardust, Fremont, Marina, and Hacienda casinos in Las Vegas on behalf of the Chicago Outfit during the 1970s and early 1980s. That world, where organised crime and legitimate business blurred into something almost indistinguishable, gives the film its particular flavour: not the street-level brutality of much mob cinema, but something more operatic, set against the neon and excess of the Las Vegas Strip at its most morally unmoored.

The production was a co-venture between Universal Pictures and two French companies, Syalis DA and Légende Films, running to a runtime of nearly three hours. By 1995, Scorsese had already demonstrated, across a career stretching back through pictures like Cape Fear and The King of Comedy, that he was as interested in the psychology of obsession and status as he was in genre mechanics. Casino fits squarely into that preoccupation. The film's Las Vegas, shot largely on location, functions less as a backdrop and more as an argument: that the casino floor is a kind of theatre of human appetite, and that the men who run it are as much its prisoners as its masters.

Robert De Niro leads as Sam "Ace" Rothstein, a role that required the kind of controlled, coiled performance he had been refining across his career, including his work with another crime-world turn that same decade. Sharon Stone plays Ginger McKenna, a role that earned her an Academy Award nomination and which remains, by most measures, one of the more demanding and fully realised performances in 1990s American cinema. Joe Pesci returns to territory he and Scorsese know well, playing enforcer Nicky Santoro with barely contained menace. James Woods and Don Rickles fill out a supporting cast that is polished but unremarkable on paper, though the material gives several of them genuine room to work. The ensemble, in short, is one of the film's considerable assets, even before Scorsese's characteristic command of pacing, music, and visual rhythm enters the equation.

I went in thinking I’d seen it all before, Goodfellas, The Godfather, LA Confidential but Casino still managed to surprise me. Scorsese brings that same electric energy, but sets it in a glitzy, seedy Vegas that feels like a character in itself. De Niro is great, Sharon Stone is phenomenal, but Joe Pesci absolutely steals the show. Unhinged, volatile, magnetic, every scene he’s in crackles with tension. It’s long, sure, but it earns every minute. Brutal, stylish, and endlessly rewatchable. One of Scorsese’s best.

Going in with those kinds of expectations, built up by so many comparable films, and still coming out the other side genuinely impressed says something about what Scorsese and this cast actually pull off here. Stone in particular is someone I think gets undersold in conversations about this film, people always go straight to Pesci (and fairly so, as I said, he's extraordinary), but her work gives the whole thing its emotional weight. At 179 minutes it is, as I mentioned, a commitment, but it's the kind of film that makes you forget you're watching a clock. If you've somehow put this one off, consider that your nudge.

Rating: ★★★★½  | Year: 1995  | Watched: 2025-04-15

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Trailer

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Related on Movies With Macca

More from Martin Scorsese: Italianamerican (1974) · The King of Comedy (1982) · Gangs of New York (2002) · Cape Fear (1991)
More with Robert De Niro: The Untouchables (1987) · The King of Comedy (1982) · Shark Tale (2004) · Little Fockers (2010)
More from France: Fantastic Planet (1973) · Letter from Siberia (1957) · Lessons of Darkness (1992) · Here and Elsewhere (1976)
More from the 1990s: Lessons of Darkness (1992) · Shinjuku Boys (1995) · Blue (1993) · Cemetery Man (1994)
More crime: A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Angst (1983) · Stolen Face (1952) · Cairo Station (1958)
More drama: Viy (1967) · Wonder (2017) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Beautiful Boy (2018)