Following Goodfellas’ massive success, the studio decided to gamble on a sequel starring De Niro and Pesci in Casino. The result was an unbridled jolt of cinema, a three hour movie that feels like an hour and a half, a breakneck pace that still allows for rare depth in the performances and characterisations.
Much of this is down to the writing; Nicholas Pileggi’s script lays bare an intricate web of corruption that reached all the way from Las Vegas to politicians, Teamsters unions and the Midwest mafia based out of Kansas City. The movie also boasts a tighter narrative than Goodfellas; even when the film jumps forward in time, it does so in a way that makes each choice feel logical and directly correlates to what happens later on.
As is to be expected from a Scorsese movie, there’s plenty of drama and violence, but the director also has a flair for showing how criminal life works without ever glorifying it. From the little things, like how Ace orders the casino cooks to put “exactly the same amount of blueberries in every muffin” to the big ones, such as when airborne feds spying on the hoods fly over a golf course and run out of gas right on the green, the story has a richness that gives it a gravity that is rarely felt in mob movies.
But the best thing about the film is Sharon Stone, who gives one of her finest performances as Ginger and makes you believe that she’s a force to be reckoned with. It’s a major step up from Basic Instinct and Silverr, and it establishes her as a key player in Scorsese’s world.
