Scorsese's 'Casino' bets high, loses big

Film Review

Think of Casino as a poker hand. You have four cards -- an Ace (director Martin Scorsese), a King (Robert De Niro), a Wild Card (Joe Pesci) and a Queen (Sharon Stone.) It's a good combination by any standards but it still doesn't amount to a winning hand.

Like Goodfellas before it, Casino is part of Scorsese's continuing attempt to chronicle the lives of members of the gangster underworld. This time he focuses on the mob's grip on Las Vegas and how it all crumbled in the early '80s.

De Niro plays Sam "Ace" Rothstein, a high better who has never lost. When the mob joins the teamster to open up a glitzy hotel/casino, they put Sam in charge.

There he meets Ginger McKenna (Stone), a doomed hooker/junkie who knows what she wants -- money. Although he knows that Ginger doesn't love him, Sam marries Ginger anyway and for a while he had what he wistfully describes as "paradise."

Things start to go wrong when Nicky Santoro (Pesci), Sam's best friend, shows up. Assigned by the mob bosses to keep his eye on Sam, Nicky has a few plans of his own.

The main problem with Casino is that it spends an ungodly amount of time to spin its tale of greed, sex and corruption.

There's a lot going on in Casino. The plot is a jumble, spanning a decade and several subplots. Minor characters are introduced and bumped off before it's clear who they are and what role they play in the main scheme of things. The happenings onscreen are hazy at best, despite the presence of two voice-over narrators. When it's over, three exhausting hours later, the viewer leaves tired, unenthused and just plain confused.

But, Casino isn't all bad.

Dante Ferretti's production design and Robert Richardson's cinematography captures '70s Las Vegas in all its gaudy, day-glo splendor. The costumes perfectly reflect the era and characters.

De Niro and Pesci still have that electricity between them that served them so well in both Raging Bull and Goodfellas. But the script, by Scorsese and Nicholas Pileggi, doesn't serve the characters well. De Niro is treated as a sort of heroic figure, a man who risks losing everything in his single-minded devotion to his casino and Pesci is stuck playing almost the exact same person he did in Goodfellas.

The real winner in Casino is Stone. Many people raised their eyebrows when Scorsese cast her. But Stone, a truly talented woman, raises the stakes and lays all her cards on the table. As Ginger she is a scheming, drugged-out Barbie doll. Yet she displays a vulnerable charm that makes it easy to see why Sam was drawn to her. He knows she's destined for self-destruction, but he longs to help her anyway.

The real winner in Casino isn't the viewer. Nor is it Scorsese or De Niro or Pesci. It's Stone. She breaks the bank.