Casino

We have now come to the final review of “Scorsese/De Niro month,” and boy, are we in for a tremendous piece of work. Once again I apologize for posting this late, but I when I was just going to sit down and write this blog, I was called to do something. Anyways, let’s start the review.

If the Mafia didn’t exist, I guess you could argue that it would be necessary to make up a Mafia group.

That statement can also be used when talking about Las Vegas. The late Roger Ebert said, “There is a universal need to believe in an outfit that exists outside the rules and can get things done.”

Ebert continued by saying, “There's a related need for a place where the rules are suspended, where there's no day or night, where everything has a price, where if you're lucky, you go home a millionaire. Of course, people who go to Vegas lose money, and people who deal with the mob, regret it. But hope is what we're talking about. Neither the mob nor Vegas could exist if most people weren't optimists.”

Martin Scorsese’s eighth, and to this day, final collaboration with Robert De Niro “Casino,” released in 1995, knows a lot about the relationship the Mafia has with Las Vegas. It’s based on a Nicholas Pileggi book, the same man who had full access to a man who once ran four casinos for the mob, and whose true story is inspired in the plot to this movie.

Life “The Godfather,” it makes us feel like eavesdroppers in a secret place.

The movie opens with a car bombed, with Sam “Ace” Rothstein floating through the cloud of fire. The movie explains how this event occurred to this man. The first hour is like a documentary. The narration is done by Rothstein, played by Robert De Niro, and other characters, explaining how the mob browsed millions out of the casinos.

It’s an interesting process. If you could guess that you had the ability to steal 25 percent of the slot-machine take – what would you do with all of those coins? How would you transfer them into cash that could be stuffed into the weekly suitcase for delivery to the mob in Kansas City? The answer lies within the movie. It also knows how to browse from the other games, and from food service and the gift shops. And it knows how the casinos don’t like to be stolen from.

There’s an incident where a man is cheating at blackjack, and a couple of security guards go up to him and stab him with a stun gun.

He collapses, the security guards call for medical attention, and dash him away to a small room where they crush his fingers with a mallet and he admits that he made a very bad mistake.

Rothstein, who is based on a real-life person named Frank (Lefty) Rosenthal, starts out as a sports oddsmaker in Chicago, gets the attention of the mob because he is intelligent in handling numbers and is given the position to run casinos because he looks like the right guy who will encourage the Vegas people to continue coming in and losing their money. He is the man who loathes unnecessary trouble. Sadly he comes across that trouble one day in a high-priced girl named Ginger McKenna, played by the very lovely and beautiful Sharon Stone.

Scorsese shows him seeing Ginger on a TV security monitor and instantly being hit by Cupid’s arrow that the image becomes a freeze-frame.

Ace showers her with gifts, which she is happy to have, but when he proposes to her, she denies. She has been in a relationship with a pimp, played by the great James Woods, since she was a child, and she doesn’t want to quit her profession. Rothstein will make her an offer that she cannot back off from. They come in the form of cars, diamonds, furs, a home with a pool and the key to his safety-deposit box. They get married, and it becomes Ace’s first mistake.

The second mistake was meeting Nicky Santoro, played by Joe Pesci, when they were both kids in Chicago. Nicky is a thief and a killer, who comes to Vegas, forms a crew and throws his weight around. After he squeeze’s a guy’s head in a vise, news spreads that he’s the mob enforcer. Even though that isn’t true, people still believe it, and soon Nicky’s name is being linked with Ace in every newspaper. There’s a very powerful scene of Nicky and Ace in the desert when Nicky says to him (I will censor out the words), “Where do you get off talking to people about me behind my back, going over my head? You said I’m bringing heat on YOU?” There are so many F bombs dropped in this scene that you have to watch it to know. Also is another scene when Nicky threatens a banker that he would crack his skull in half because he doesn’t care about prison and he is “that” stupid.

Scorsese tells his story with the energy and pacing he’s well-known for, and with a boatload of little details that feel just right. Not only the details of cheap 1970s period decoration, but little moments such as when Ace orders the casino cook to put “exactly the same amount of blueberries in every muffin.” Or when airborne feds are circling a golf course while spying on the hoods, and their plane runs out of gas and they have to make an emergency landing right on the grass.

And when vital evidence is found because of a low-level hood kept a record of his costs. And when Ace hosts a weekly show on local TV – and reveals a talent for juggling.

Meanwhile, Ginger starts drinking, and Ace is worried about their child. They both start to have public fights, and Ginger turns to Nicky for some advice that soon becomes comfort. When Ace finds out she may be fooling around, he says a line in the most perfect way ever, “I just hope it’s not somebody who I think it may be.” The narrator then says, “It was the last time the street guys would be given such an opportunity.” All the mob had to do was to take care of business. However, when Ace met Ginger and Nicky came to town, the pieces were all in place for the mob to become the biggest loser in Vegas history. Nicky says a line that I will censor since I want to make this blog swear free, “We screwed up good.” Scorsese gets the feel, the mood, almost the smell of the city just about perfect. De Niro and Pesci occupy their roles with unconscious confidence, Stone’s call girl is her best performance, and supporting cast includes comedian Alan King, the best insult-comic Don Rickles, impressionist Kevin Pollak, Frank Vincent, L.Q. Jones, John Bloom, Dick Smothers, Vinny Vella, and Pasquale Cajano.

Unlike his other Mafia movies, “Casino” is as concerned with history as with plot and character. The city of Las Vegas is his subject, and he shows how acceptable people like Ace, Ginger and Nicky to grow, and then spit them out, because the Vegas machine is too commercial and powerful to allow anyone to slow its operation. Ebert gives a history lesson by telling us, “When the Mafia, using funds from the Teamsters union, was ejected in the late 1970s, the 1980s ushered in a new source of financing: junk bonds.” The guys who had those on them might be the inspiration for the sequel. “The big corporations took over,” the narrator sadly views. “Today, it looks like Disneyland,” which brings us to our opening segment. In a way, people need to believe that a town like Las Vegas is run by guys like Ace and Nicky.

In a place that breaks rules, maybe you can break some as well. For those who can think like a gambler, it’s actually less comforting to know that giant corporations, financed by bonds and run by accountants, operate the Vegas machines. They know all the odds, and the house always wins. With Ace in charge, who know what might happen?

My rating for this film is also a 10. It’s my absolute favorite of the all the films that I have reviewed in the month, and another one of my absolute favorite films. Thank you for joining in on this month, and I hope you have enjoyed. Stay tuned for more of my reviews.