30 11 2010

In 1983, Sam “Ace” Rothstein (De Niro) exits a restaurant and gets into his car, which explodes when he turns it on. Sam then narrates the story, and flashes back to the beginning.BOOM!Yes,the movie starts with a bang and this isn’t the only bang involved especially because of the violence involved in the film!Thanks to Nicky Santoro[Joe Pesci],the ultimate badass in town who happens to be a childhood friend of Sam Rothstein now runs an A-list casino named Tangiers in Vegas.

Some mob bosses wanted Sam to be the casino boss so they could “skim” off the money that is flowing in through the casino.Sam does his job well and money starts flowing across the Las Vegas desert towards the gangsters.All was well until the hot-headed Nicholas “Nicky” Santoro makes an appearance at the “sin city”.I havent seen any other director of Scorsese’s class stereotyping his own characters in a movie.The only time I have seen Joe Pesci[as of now] is in Scorsese movies[with an exception of a comedy film],and every time he is the same bad ass gangster in all Scorsese movies and he helps in getting the movie into “most uses of the word fuck in the movies” list.

Sam Rothstein’s trouble starts when Nicky Santoro begins an organised gangster roll in the city.Whenever nicky gets in to trouble Rothstein’s name is also dragged into the news due to his long time association with Nicky.In the mean time Sam falls for a call girl,Ginger and makes her to marry him by showering her with expensive  jewelery,clothes and all other stuffs of the luxury kind.Finally Sam and ginger easily became the “happily married” couple in Vegas.But the happy times soon comes to an end when Sam realised that his wife still maintains contact with her Pimp boyfriend back in town.All hell breaks loose in their marriage life.The role Ginger McKenna played by Sharon Stone fetched her the Academy Award.And she deserves it because every time she is on-screen she defines the word “bitch”.The funny thing is Ace knows that Ginger is a bitch and he even admit it through his narration,but he just cant shut his world to Ginger because he is madly in love with her.So madly in love that he  buys millions worth of jewelry just for her and puts millions of dollars in cash in a bank under her name.Through out his narration,he says that he is doing all this because he trust his wife as though he has a doubt in his mind.De Niro effectively evokes sympathy for Sam, and Pesci and Stone does their best to evoke hatred!

Casino is full of Voice over narration of its lead characters.Just after the opening sequence the narrations start explaining how the mobsters skimmed money off the casino.The information is in very fine tuned detail that I found it very hard to comprehend how the system worked.Maybe that’s the point,Scorsese just wanted us to understand that gangsters looted money from the casino.Maybe he just wanted the audience to get the feel of how fast system works  and how complicated it is.Scorcese brings a lot of energy into the movie through the rich and well contained dialogues in the pacy screenplay.The 3 Hour running time just felt like a whiz as the movie was entertainment at its best.Robert De Niro once again proved that he belongs to the list of class actors.Joe Pesci still remains god to the real life gangster.No one is better than Pesci when it comes to Bad Ass gangster!

Casino,for me is one of the best works by Scorcese,it is on par with Taxi Driver and The Aviator.The movie has such ferocity and momentum which makes it one of the best American Crime movie made till date.To pay tribute towards the number of “fuck” and its derivatives used in the movie I must say that this a Fuckin great movie!

P.S-Many critics say that “Casino”  is the final chapter of his Gangster movies.But i don’t think so,”Gangs Of new York” is a gangster movie based in  19th century.Gangsters are always gangsters,Knives and guns are the only difference!



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