Casino

Director: Martin Scorsese

Writers: Nicholas Pileggi, Martin Scorsese

Starring: Robert De Niro, Sharon Stone, Joe Pesci

Released: 1995

Martin Scorsese, he knows how to make gangster films, right? He's done this, Goodfellas, erm, Gangs of New York, erm, The Departed... OK, maybe he's not done as many as I thought.

Set in Las Vegas in the 1970s and 80s, the film tells the story of Sam Rothstein (De Niro), who runs a casino (the clue's in the film's title), mob enforcer Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci) and Rothstein's wife Ginger (Sharon Stone).

Rothstein runs the said casino successfully, but things start to go wrong when his mob bosses send Santoro as his protection; Santoro quickly spirals out-of-control, creating a multitude of problems for Rothstein, especially when he decides to start his own crew and committing robberies and killing off rivals.

At the same time, Rothstein falls for Ginger, a hustler under the spell of a former boyfriend (James Woods). Despite marrying and having a daughter, Ginger is never committed to Rothstein and turns to drink and drugs.

I have a lot of problems with this film. Firstly, the entire film seems to be told in flashback (for no obvious reason), with constant voice-overs from De Niro and Pesci. These get especially annoying when introducing seemingly every single character in much the way that happens in terrible Guy Ritchie films ("Pistol Pete was a stand-up guy who's just done a six-point for hitting a judge with a purple dildo" etc). The constant voice-overs tell the entire story, leaving a lot of scenes redundant. Maybe my view of this has been warped by years of terrible cockney gangster films that have used this trick to death, but it doesn't make it any less bad that it was done here before films that were influenced by it.

Rating: 1/5