Movie Review: Casino (1995)

Inspired by true events and real-life characters, Casino celebrates Vegas before it was scrubbed clean and gentrified. Martin Scorsese delivers another intense, if not perfect, journey into the intriguing and violent world of Crime Inc.

Expert handicapper Sam "Ace" Rothstein (Robert De Niro) always possessed a talent for making money from gambling. In the early 1970s his mid-west Mafia associates, backed by the Teamsters, reward him by giving him his own Las Vegas casino, Tangiers, to run. Ace operates a tight joint, weeding out the lower class criminals, disposing of cheats, and maximizing profits, becoming a well-respected man about town, in as far as Vegas respects any man.

Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci) was Ace's extremely violent sidekick on their way up in the shadow of the criminal world, and Ace is not thrilled when Nicky also relocates to Vegas. Ace meets and marries professional hustler Ginger McKenna (Sharon Stone), a gorgeous but money-hungry gold digger with an unhealthy attachment to small time hustler Lester Diamond (James Woods). Eventually Ace's life begins to unravel: he insults the wrong local power brokers and runs afoul of Vegas' licensing requirements; Nicky's violent methods reflect badly on Ace's business; and Ginger looks to rob him blind and make off with their daughter.

Further developing the visual style of GoodFellas, Scorsese directs the front end of Casino with plenty of colour, movement, and panache, the intermittent narration by De Niro and especially Pesci adding sharp humour and plenty of personality. Scorsese recognizes in the sights, sounds, underlying sleaze and unbridled greed of Vegas the perfect playground for criminals looking for a veneer of respectability as they rake in the easy profits.

The last third of Casino slows down to a lumbering pace, the disintegrating relationship between Ace and Ginger sucking the life out of the movie. The crime and casino elements take a back seat to the interminable melodrama of Ginger betraying Ace at every opportunity, his refusal to decisively kick her out of his life a blot against his otherwise sharp judgement.

Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci play against each other with ease born from intense professional familiarity. After Raging Bull and GoodFellas, Casino represents their third collaboration with Scorsese, and once again the characters of Ace and Nicky share a destructively dependent relationship. They need each other yet manage to also repeatedly trade biting insults and hurtful betrayals. Casino lives off the energy of De Niro and Pesci, the former eager to transition from a life of crime to the appearance of respectability, the latter more interested in maximizing profit in a city that rewards abject criminality.

Ginger probably represents the pinnacle of Sharon Stone's acting career, and she deserves credit for holding her own opposite De Niro and Pesci. Ginger embodies the single weak spot that Ace has, and Stone grabs the role with relish, earning herself a nomination for a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award. Ginger's obsession with materialistic wealth and ability to manipulate men perfectly fits Stone's screen persona, with the added spice of Ginger having a blind spot of her own in the shape of Lester Diamond. The relationship between Ginger and Diamond adds undeniable tension to Casino, but it's non-development also represents a lost opportunity.

At nearly three hours, Casino does overreach the scope of the available material. But the better moments leave a lasting impression, and while the movie does not deal a royal flush, it delivers a full house.

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Movie Review: Mean Streets (1973)

A landmark film in the careers of director Martin Scorsese and actor Robert De Niro, Mean Streets examines the gritty lives of assorted small-time criminals in New York's Little Italy. Filmed in unglamorous locations emphasizing desperate men pretending to be big-shots while scrounging for a better living, the film is all about characters dripping with unsatisfied bravado trying to create space for their pathetically over-inflated egos.

Mean Streets just drops in on Charlie (Harvey Keitel) and his friend Johnny Boy (De Niro). Charlie is a low level hood doing the dirty work of collecting protection money from struggling businesses and trying to make his way up the crime family ladder, using the influence of his uncle Giovani (Cesare Danova). Johnny Boy is reckless and owes money all over town, including a large amount to local shark Michael (Richard Romanus).

Charlie desperately tries to keep Johnny Boy out of trouble, but generally to no avail. Charlie is also in a relationship with Johnny Boy's cousin Teresa (Amy Robinson), who suffers from epilepsy. Tony (David Proval) is friends with Charlie and Johnny Boy, and runs the local bar where they all hang out. Michael is growing tired of Johnny Boy not making his debt payments, leading to an ugly, unavoidable confrontation.


Mean Streets was the beginning of successful career-long collaboration between Scorsese and De Niro, which would include classics like Taxi Driver, New York, New York, Raging Bull, and GoodFellas, with New York City frequently the third point in the creative triangle. In Mean Streets, Scorsese brings out of De Niro a performance of doomed impetuousness, more jovial but not any less intense than his trademark future starring roles.

Harvey Keitel actually has the leading role as Charlie, but he is eclipsed by De Niro's Johnny Boy and Richard Romanus as the slimy but steely Michael. Keitel would rarely play the lead again and instead found his niche as a powerful supporting actor.

When De Niro is not stealing the movie with his young magnetism, Mean Streets flounders somewhat and features numerous scenes of the men posturing like peacocks and challenging each other's masculinity, often erupting into physical violence. The theme of repetitive reassertion for the overflowing testosterone does get tiresome. More interesting are the relatively few moments that focus on Charlie's relationships with Giovani and Teresa, who are both given relatively truncated treatment in the script co-written by Scorsese and frequent early collaborator Mardik Martin.

Mean Streets is an unflinching drama set in the world of crude wannabe mobsters, a window to a world that is equally captivating and distasteful.

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Movie Review: Raging Bull (1980)

The true story of middleweight champion boxer Jake LaMotta, Raging Bull chronicles a life that passes through boxing's glory and agony. Single-minded ambition combined with a dense self-centred personality and an inability to connect with anyone except at the business end of a fist ensured that LaMotta experienced the highs and the lows with equal intensity. Raging Bull is also a career highlight for Robert De Niro and director Martin Scorsese.

We meet Jake (De Niro) as a young fighter in the early 1940's, as he slowly makes a name for himself in low-level bouts. From a poor Bronx background, Jake has a short temper and suspicious personality that allows him to easily abuse his first wife and maintain only an edgy relationship with his loyal brother Joey (Joe Pesci). Jake has a thunderous punch and the ability to survive terrible beatings without being knocked-down.

His reputation rises with a series of victories, and his personal life seems to take a turn for the better when he courts and marries Vickie (Cathy Moriarty), a young beauty from the neighbourhood. Jake believes that he is good enough to earn a title fight, and has the ambition to match his uncompromising fighting style. Never knocked down but with a mixed record, he takes on Sugar Ray Robinson in a series of fights that enhance his standing in the boxing world.

Despite blatantly throwing a fight to appease local crime lords, he eventually becomes world middleweight champion. But even at the top of the world Jake's insane jealousy means that he can trust no one, least of all Vickie and Joey. From the heights of success he has a long way to fall, as his personal life collapses and his career ends with mounting weight problems. He opens and operates a nightclub, but this lands him in jail after he unwittingly allows young girls to prostitute themselves out of his establishment. The story ends in 1964, with Jake establishing a niche for himself as an after-dinner entertainer.

Scorsese directs Raging Bull in brilliant black and white and using almost exclusively mid-range and close-up shots, as he delves deeply and at close quarters into the life and emotions of LaMotta. The movie is about the thin line between the forces that govern spectacular success and stunning failure; and boxing as a perfect metaphor. LaMotta's combative power and determination took him to the top; his inability to relate to others except through the lens of confrontation ensured his undoing. Scorsese makes sure that his cameras are never far from any of the forces, and LaMotta's life is portrayed as equally brutal inside and outside the ring. The graphic scenes of boxing violence are brutally intense, the black and white cinematography enhancing the sweat, blood and agony of close quarters combat between men of monstrous willpower.

De Niro gives one of the performances of his career, convincingly bringing LaMotta to life from a young man to a chastened but unremorseful fallen hero, capturing the right amount of drive and human failings without ever appearing to act. Filled with honest brooding intensity, the performance earned him the Academy Award as Best Actor for 1980. Opposite De Niro's LaMotta, Joey and Vickie are the only other major characters in the film. Joe Pesci became a leading character actor with his performance as Joey, and established the outline of the persona that he would perfect in GoodFellas ten years later, also alongside De Niro and Scorsese. Cathy Moriarty's debut as Vickie is memorable but unfortunately relatively statuesque.

Raging Bull is a timeless classic, the story of man's sometimes desperate struggle to control the potent conflicting forces that lie within, and that can both construct and destroy destiny.

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Movie Review: GoodFellas (1990)

Based on the true story of New York mafia gangster Henry Hill, GoodFellas is a sprawling, entertaining epic that covers three decades in the lives of colourful criminals.  While GoodFellas lacks the gravitas of The Godfather, it makes up for it with irresistible personality.

It's 1955, and teenager Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) is growing up in Brooklyn, living in an apartment across the street from a taxi office that in reality is a front for mob boss Paulie (Paul Sorvino). Henry is excited by the prestige and wealth of the mobsters, and over the years he graduates from doing odd-jobs for Paulie's crew to participating in crimes, and grows into the role of a wise guy in Paulie's inner circle. Other criminals with emerging reputations rotating around Paulie include Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro) and Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci). Jimmy is smooth, calm, and viscous when needed. Tommy is loud, unhinged and volatile, capable of switching from funny to deadly in an instant.

Henry ultimately proves his value by helping to plan and flawlessly execute the theft of a large amount of money from an Air France office. He moves into the big time of flashy cars and slick clothes, gets married to Karen (Lorraine Bracco), and is quickly cheating on her with barely discreet mistresses.

While the life of crime seems to have few downsides, trouble is lurking. Tommy's temper is out of control, and in 1970 he kills a made man, usually considered untouchable, from the Gambino family. And when a shakedown in Florida goes wrong, Henry is sent to jail. Upon his release and with his lifestyle threatened, he becomes a full-fledged drug dealer, despite Paulie's warning not to. With drug money rolling in and now himself an addict, Henry is quickly back to the big time.

In 1978 Jimmy, Tommy, Henry and many other men from Paulie's crew pull-off a multi-million dollar robbery of a Lufthansa office, but the enormous amounts of money cause stress between the men, and they turn on each other. Jimmy starts a clean-up operation, eliminating most of the participants in the Lufthansa heist. Tommy is killed in a hit arranged by the Gambinos. And in 1980 anti-narcotics agents finally catch up with Henry's drug operations, forcing him to make a choice between certain death and full disclosure.

While The Godfather series focused on the upper echelons of mobster families, GoodFellas takes us to the street level, and to the lives of the wannabe men who do the dirty work while wearing expensive clothes. It's an engrossing movie, filled with rich characters, memorable scenes, comedy, drama and violence in perfect balance.

Despite being based on real people, the three main characters in GoodFellas are all larger than life. Relatively unknown at the time of filming, Ray Liotta captures the centre of the film with an affecting performance as Henry Hill, on a remarkable journey from wide-eyed hanger-on to a wild-eyed, drug-addicted desperate mobster. Robert De Niro is surprisingly and effectively controlled as the scheming Jimmy, who emerges as the most calculating member of Paulie's gang. And Joe Pesci gives a most memorably stunning performance as Tommy, a hypnotic package of dynamite that may explode at anyone, anytime and for any reason. It's impossible to ignore Pesci when he's on the screen, as in every scene he's either already in the centre of the action or about to make sure that he creates a maelstrom around him.

Scorsese directs with an emphasis on continuous kinetic energy, and his use of freeze-frames is terrific, but unfortunately limited to the earlier scenes. His screenplay, co-written with Nicolas Pileggi and based on Pileggi's book, keeps the action humming for 146 minutes of running time, while squeezing in as many F-bombs as possible.

Despite lives drenched in crime, GoodFellas succeeds in presenting Henry, Jimmy and Tommy as characters who would be thoroughly entertaining to invite for dinner. Whether anyone lives to finish the meal would be entirely up to Tommy.

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