Casino (1995).

Martin Scorsese seems to be doing pretty well for himself so far, these days.  He's got a ton of great films to his credit.  His work is, in general, of such a quality that it has allowed him that rare achievement which is granted to few artists.  He's managed to become a household name not just within critical, but also the pop culture circles of average moviegoers.  Even those who rarely catch any of his cinematic efforts have some sort of name recognition of the guy.  This can be seen in the way so many moments, characters, or lines of dialogue have kept turning up in the most unlikeliest of places.  Despite the guy's notorious reputation for his unflinching look at the history of violence in America, somehow none of this has stood in the way of, say, the makers of kids TV shows from taking the three main characters from Goodfellas and turning them into a bunch of animated talking pigeons.  Not making a word of that up, by the way.  You want to know the strangest thing about a piece of pop culture osmosis like that?  I'll bet you anything it's from shows like this that 80s and 90s kids like me first had any inkling that films like Taxi Driver and Raging Bull were out there, somewhere.  And the one thing they all had in common was that they were directed by this small looking guy with the somehow memorable name.  I got around to him eventually, yet it took some time.  Nor would it surprise me to learn that the process at which I arrived at Marty's cinema is a route that's been traveled by others of my generation in a similar way or fashion.

It didn't start out with Scorsese, for me.  It began with Francis Ford Coppola.  You know what, come to think of it, a better way to say it is that it's all Marlon Brando's fault.  Looking back, I think I can say he's the one who got this whole aspect of my movie-going life rolling.  It even began thanks to the same show that parodied Goodfellas.  I saw another episode of Animaniacs that parodied the fictional figure of Don Vito Corleone, and I guess the animators must have done at least something to capture the gravitas that the actor was able to give the character in the original film.  Because after a few repeat viewings I got curious about what it was the Warner Bros. (and the Warner Sister) were going out of their way not just to lampoon, but also highlight what I somehow knew, even as a kid, was something they clearly thought was important.  I mean, yeah, they were having a laugh at Brando's most famous roll and all that crap.  But it's like, at the same time, there was no way the guys who made that show could hide the fact that the only reason the parody was there in the first place was because they felt that here was a character that deserved respect.  It wasn't like how things are now.  These days, if you want to parody or satirize something, you've only got one goal in mind.  To tear the target a new one, and leave them in a ditch somewhere for the scavengers to finish off.  With this guy, it was all different.

Here you could tell they liked whoever this character was under all the laughter.  It was like being made King for a Day, even as they were poking fun at you.  I don't think I'd ever seen a show where the glories of cinema's past got that kind of respect.  It was like being introduced to a foreign language that you already knew how to speak on some level so fundamental you didn't even know it was there.  Once you were in it, however, it was like you always knew the lingo by heart.  It was like discovering this whole new, little world, and it was all meant for you.  "It was like mainlining adrenaline, and I was hooked in seconds (web)".  So basically I'm just going along, you know.  Hanging loose and enjoying all the pleasures that 90s kids culture has to offer.  All that good stuff we used to have and do.  Then as happens, I get to remembering that guy the Animaniacs celebrated a while back, and I kind of start to wonder if maybe I shouldn't check out the original source material.  Why not, I mean that's what the show was best at.  One of the good things to be said about a show like this was that its pop culture and movie parodies were often good enough to make you want to go and hunt down the original films they were referencing.  That's how good they were.  It was satire as a form of sharing your enthusiasms with others in a way that made your audience want to learn more and the history of a film they lampooned.  

Or at least that's what happened to me, anyway, so far as I know, looking back.  That show might have been the main reason I became a film junkie in the first place.  I'm don't just mean an interest in whatever the hell is the latest releases from the next BS streaming service, either.  I'm talking about watching a bunch of cartoon version of Scorsese characters as they somehow end up as extra's in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, and the whole damn thing is so funny that I finally allow myself the chance to go and watch one of the groundbreaking pictures in the history of Horror genre.  Can you even name one show for kids that grants them that level of an education?  I mean for real.  Anybody?  Didn't think so.  That's how good we had it back then.  Anyway, the way the road to Marty's films worked is I'm shown the character of Don Corleone.  He's always there flitting around in either the front or back of my mind, like this odd figure of mystery that part of me wants to figure out.  However I don't do that yet.  Instead, what happens is I'm in this now old, and defunct video store, the kind where they used to have wall mounted TVs that would run a constant loop of old movie trailers.  And one of them comes on starring that Ferris Bueller guy, and who do you think is sharing the spotlight with him?  That's right.  It was that guy from the Animaniacs mobster episode.  Or rather it was the original guy they were making fun of.

He looked just like his characterization from the TV show into the bargain.  It was like watching a cartoon character come to life.  The whole thing was surreal and fun at the same time.  What made it even better was that here was Brando clearly having a good time while parodying himself, for all intents and purposes.  It was just a trailer for some obscure 80s comedy called The Freshman that I'd never even heard about until just that moment.  Yet I knew the moment I saw the damn thing that pretty soon I would going to watch all of it from start to finish.  I mean, I don't know about you, but there was never any question in my mind.  So I watched the Matt Broderick flick, and pretty much got to laugh my ass off.  Like, for me, it was getting to watch a cartoon you used to enjoy as a kid take on the qualities of flesh and blood.  I have no clue how many others out there were this lucky.  That was sort of the whole deal, though, right?  I mean all Steven Spielberg did was create a kids show that gave you an interest in being a film buff.  The whole setup was that simple, and it paid off like gangbusters where I was concerned.  So after I watch The Freshman I'm ready to gear myself up to watch the flick that started this whole thing.  I finally sit down and take in The Godfather, and the rest is pretty much history.  

You got to understand, this wasn't my first introduction to what's now considered Classic Cinema.  Hell, Brando wasn't even the first movie star I was familiar with.  That honor went to guys like the Three Stooges and the Marx Brothers.  That's just how my childhood was, okay?  It was the strangest freaking thing.  Where other guys were busy with the Ninja Turtles, or the Masters of the Universe, I'm over in my little corner learning about these classic Hollywood tough guys like Humphrey Bogart and James Cagney.  So you just know that shit's going to put a particular slant in your mind.  There I am, barely nine years old, and already I'm turning myself into a temporal anachronism.  The kind of guy who will grow up with aesthetic tastes that are always going to be somewhat antiquarian by the standards of the rest of the world.  Yeah, maybe it means I'm always playing catch-up.  None of you mooks still have a clue what you're missing, and it's a sentiment that guys like Scorsese are pretty much committed to.  I don't think I've ever run across someone with so much knowledge of the cinema of bygone days.  I mean this guy here is like a walking encyclopedia.  He can tell you who directors like Powell and Pressbuger were.  Or give you an archeological rundown of where the Blues music genres comes from. 

My point is that while I'm a late-comer to Scorsese, it still didn't take me long to figure why this guy was such a big deal.  He's just plain good at his job; that's the point.  I mean think about it, here you've got this poor street punk from NYC.  He's got a good home, and yet he lives in a rough neighborhood, and one of the only escape routes he can find from all that crap is the local movie theater.  It's not the only place where Marty got his education, but it is where the rest of his professional life was determined for better or worse.  Take your pick on how you want to look at an outcome like that.  Not much difference from any other roll of the dice, so far as I'm concerned.  He just became one of the few who, first made it out of the ghetto alive, and then made a name for himself as a movie artist.  Last I checked, he's still one of the most well regarded filmmakers of either the 20th or 21st century.  Someone who to this day is still worthy to stand among the giants.  I mean to hear some people tell it, this guy deserves to have his own spot up on Rushmore, or something.  At least that's what they all say in all the old critics circles.  When you take that same reputation and apply it to the rest of us in the aisles, that's where things can get interesting.  For instance, I swear, it's difficult to tell just what kind of reputation any of the classic director's of yesteryear still have in this day and age.  That applies even to those who are still with us, like Marty, George, or Spielberg.  See, back in the 80s, these guys were all like titans.

I'm serious.  These they had it all down so cold.  When I was still just a kid if you heard that somebody like Lucas or Scorsese was releasing a new film in theaters, that in itself was pretty much considered something of an event.  Anybody who could make to the premier of a film like Goodfellas was considered one lucky bastard.  And the rest of us all had to just sit and bask in the other guy's gloating privileges.   Oh yeah, and we also happen to learn along the way about just how good the picture was.  That was way back then, however.  These days there's no telling what kind of reputation any artist has got, even if you've got a flick like Raging Bull or Raiders of the Lost Ark on your resume.  It's all like, "Big deal", now.  Take you number and get the fuck back in line.  At least that's how things seem to shake out to me, anyway.  If all these morbid musings should ever turn out to be the case, then all I can say is guys like Marty Scorsese from Queens is always going to have at least one champion in his corner so far as my neck of the woods is concerned.  Anybody's got a problem with that, take it to someone who gives a fuck.  I'm here to appreciate artists at work, ya get me?  At least, that's what I'm normally up to here, more or less.  Then I went and watched a film called Casino, and the credits rolled I came away with one simple question on my mind.  Can geniuses even geniuses have their off days?

The Story. 

Ace (Robert De Niro) (v/o): "When you love someone, you've gotta trust them.  There's no other way.  You've got to give them the key to everything that's yours.  Otherwise, what's the point?...For a while...I believed that's the kind of love I had...Before I ever ran a casino, or got myself blown up, Ace Rothstein was a hell of a handy-capper, I can tell you that.  I was so good, that whenever I bet I could change the odds for every bookmaker in the Country.  I'm serious, I had it down so cold, that I was given paradise on Earth.  I was given one of the biggest casinos in Las Vegas to run, the Tangiers.  By the only kinda guys that can actually get you that kinda money.  Sixty-two million, seven-hundred thousand dollars.  I don't know all the details..."

Nicky (Joe Pesci) (v/o): "Matter of fact, nobody knew all the details, but it should have been perfect.  I mean he had me, Nicky Santoro, his best friend, watching his ass.  And he had Ginger (Sharon Stone), the woman he loved, on his arm...But in the end?  We fucked it all up.  It should've been so sweet, too.  But it turned out to be the last time that street guys like us were ever given anything that fuckin' valuable again".

Conclusion: Martin Scorsese by the Numbers.

"As far back as I can remember", he's always been associated with gangsters.  When you're a kid, there's no way your parents are going to let you near even half the shit this guy decided to put in front of a camera.  At least today any boy or girl below the age of ten has a film like Hugo to fall back on, if that's you're thing.  Hell, the guy even said he made that picture when his own daughter complained how she couldn't watch any of his other stuff, so he did her a favor.  It's sweet as hell, and it doesn't change the fundamentals one bit.  Whenever you talk about the cinema of Scorsese, you're talking about the Mob, nine times of out of ten.  That's the mold he's been cast in now and forever.  Now grant you, there was a brief space of time when this wasn't the case.  Things were different during the director's inaugural heydays during the New Wave of the 70s, when guys like him, Lucas, and Spielberg were all these bunch of new, young Turks (the Movie Brats, as they were called).  Back then, Marty was mostly famous as what might call a slice-of-life auteur.  What that means is he was able to fashion his own particular brand of movie-making.  One that had a clear focus on two aspects.  Life as it was lived out in the streets, with a particular focus on protagonists who were always walking, in one way or another, somewhere along a wrong and dangerous route.  These characters could be anybody, from cab drivers to boxers, to even ambulance drivers and computers programmers who worked well paying jobs in a high rise building.

The one thing all of these otherwise disparate figures had in common was that they knew what it was like to be one of Scorsese's Lonely Men.  Here's how Roger Ebert describes these troubled individuals.  "His protagonists are often awkward outsiders who try too hard or are not sure what to say. Travis Bickle; Rupert Pupkin; Max Cady in Cape Fear; Tommy DeVito in GoodFellas; Newland Archer in The Age of Innocence, who has no idea how to behave when he experiences real love; Vincent Lauria in The Color of Money; Frank Pierce in Bringing Out the Dead; Howard Hughes (4)".  He then caps that list off with just this much in the way of summation.  "Scorsese is uninterested in conventional heroes (ibid)".  Here's the thing, I can't say how that reads to anybody else.  However one thing I can say for sure is that it doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of what you might call the typical Scorsese protagonist.  The way the director tends to treat the main leads of his stories in actual practice is best described as both clinical and ethical by turns.  A better way to say it is that he seems to take the same critical stance that writers like Fyodor Dostoyevsky did with characters like Raskolnikov, in novels like Crime and Punishment.  I've heard that book described as an inverted detective story, and the more I think it over, the greater that phrase becomes as a good description of the kind of film Scorsese makes.

Far from the kind of sympathetic and hollow romanticized light that Ebert wants to look at these characters in, the director tends to be a lot more clear-headed in contrast.  He knows his main focus as a storyteller tends to zero in on life's great rogues gallery, and all the fortunes and pitfalls that come with it.  Much like the author of Crime and Punishment, Scorsese's cinema carries the artist's constant focus on the fates of these Lonely Men to an almost obsessive level.  For whatever reason, Marty likes to focus on the kind of mind that belongs to either a criminal, or else the type of person who is always teetering on a tightrope's edge of falling into a bad place.  Just like his literary predecessor, the director can't seem to tear his gaze away from the sort of people who spend most of their lives living on a thin line between light and darkness.  They often have trouble distinguishing between shades themselves, and that what gets them into so much trouble.  These are all things that the filmmakers is crystal clear about in all of his pictures.  I've heard Scorsese compared to poets like Dante, and while that's maybe understandable to an extent, the fact is that writers like Dostoyevsky or Flannery O'Connor seem like a better fit for the type of stories he likes to tell.  The former because of a shared fascination with crime stories, and the latter because of a willingness to acknowledge all of the messier details of modern life.  

It's turned Marty into America's premiere artist of what I'll have to refer to as Modern American Noir, for lack of a better phrase.  It's a carry over from the subgenre's original incarnation from Hollywood's Golden Age during the 30s, 40s, and 50s.  These were the films that ended up galvanizing the artist's Imagination as a young boy.  So it somehow makes sense that as an adult he would end up looking for all the ways he could of carrying on the legacy of actors like Bogart, Cagney, and directors like Howard Hawkes, John Ford, Powell and Pressburger, and Alfred Hitchcock forward even up to the present day.  The fact that he's still able to carve out a space for Film Noir in an era that seems totally given over to the Tentpole Spectacle has got to say something about the man's talent.  Even if it does mean his focus has always been on cataloguing the self-inflicted tribulations of life's bad men.  If it's still somehow enough to make fans flock to the screens long after the New Wave movement came and went, then that's a real feather in the cap, I'd say.  Besides, part of what makes it all work even now might include something else he has in common with writers like O'Connor and Dostoyevsky.  Even when he showcases the actions of outlaws and malcontents at their lowest ebb, Marty always seems willing to extend an olive branch, of sorts.  It's one that contains Shakespeare's all-important quality of mercy. 

This was and remains the main focus of Scorsese's films, and a film like Casino is no different.  Now, there is a trick to be taken into account when talking about a film like this.  It shares a number of elements in common with a work like Goodfellas.  Aside from the cast members and a focus on the same social milieu of organized crime, the other thing Casino has in common with its earlier counterpart is that it's a fictionalization of real life events.  Specifically, the entire plot revolves around the real-life downfall of how the Mafia lost control of Las Vegas, and of the handful of players that could reasonably said to form the nexus of the whole tale.  Situations like this can always be tricky for the critic.  There's a question of veracity involved that doesn't otherwise exist for most stories that are pure make-believe from start to finish.  Anyone who wants to tackle films like this faces a very limited number of options.  You can focus on the real life events that the movie's based on, and let the yardstick of your critique be how well the film holds up in terms of being true to the facts.  A second option is to try and strike a delicate balance between fact and fiction.  The unspoken standard of this approach is to try and see how well you can be fair to the claims of both actual history and the validity of artistic representation.  It's a hell of a tightrope walk to try and pull of, and I know I'm not capable of it here.  

If you want the advice of someone who is good at this job, I'd advise you to consult the following YouTube video by online content creator Nick Hodges, owner and operator of the History Buffs channel.  He's the one who can fill you in on all the actual historic facts that the film uses as a jumping off point.  As for myself, I'm going to have to go with the third and final option of least resistance.  While I acknowledge that this film is inspired from a major, almost a defining chapter of Mob history, I'm still going to have to limit my critique to the film itself as a potential work of Art, first and last.  Which means I'm going to have to set aside concerns about what does and doesn't fail to be true to life.  If you still need to focus on these aspects of the picture, then again, that's what the Hodges link just above is for (and I do recommend it not just for its attention to detail, but also for its pretty funny sense of humor).  It's the success of the film as an example of pure storytelling that will be the single goal of all that follows from here on in.  Which brings us to a consideration of arguably the most important point of any story, it's plot.  If I had to give a general summation of the narrative at the heart of this picture, then I'd have to describe it as one of those classic love triangle situations.  It concerns the fates of three characters at the heart of the Mafia's Vegas operations, and their roles in the downfall.

It's the words of Roger Ebert who I think can provide a better full description of the tale Scorsese has to tell.  "The movie opens with a car bombing, and the figure of Sam “Ace” Rothstein floating through the air. The movie explains how such a thing came to happen to him. The first hour plays like a documentary; there’s a narration, by Rothstein (Robert De Niro) and others, explaining how the mob skimmed millions out of the casinos.  It’s an interesting process. Assuming you could steal 25 percent of the slot-machine take—what would you do with tons of coins? How would you convert them into bills that could be stuffed into the weekly suitcase for delivery to the mob in Kansas City? Casino knows. It also knows how to skim from the other games, and from food service, and the gift shops. And it knows about how casinos don’t like to be stolen from. There’s an incident where a man is cheating at blackjack, and a couple of security guys sidle up to him and jab him with a stun gun. He collapses, the security guys call for medical attention, and hurry him away to a little room where they pound on his fingers with a mal let and he agrees that he made a very bad mistake.

"Rothstein, based on the real-life figure of Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal, starts life as a sports oddsmaker in Chicago, attracts the attention of the mob because of his genius with numbers, and is assigned to 144 run casinos because he looks like an efficient businessman who will encourage the Vegas goose to continue laying its golden eggs. He is a man who detests unnecessary trouble. One day, however, trouble finds him, in the person of Ginger McKenna (Sharon Stone), a high priced call girl.  Scorsese shows him seeing Ginger on a TV security monitor and falling so instantly in love that the image becomes a freeze-frame. Ace showers her with gifts, which she is happy to have, but when he wants to marry her, she objects; she’s been with a pimp named Lester Diamond (James Woods) since she was a kid, and she doesn’t want to give up her profession. Rothstein will make her an offer she can’t refuse: cars, diamonds, furs, a home with a pool, and the key to his safe-deposit box. She marries him. It is Ace’s first mistake.  Another mistake was to meet Nicky Santoro (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 squeezes one guy’s head in a vise, the word goes out that he’s the mob’s enforcer. Not true, but people believe it, and soon Nicky’s name is being linked with his old pal Ace in all the newspapers.

"Scorsese tells his story...with a wealth of little details that feel just right. Not only the details of tacky 1970s period decor, but little moments such as when Ace orders the casino cooks 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 green.  And when crucial evidence is obtained because a low-level hood kept a record of his expenses. 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 kid, and they start having public fights, and she turns to Nicky for advice that soon becomes consolation, and when Ace finds out she may be fooling around, he utters a line that, in its way, is perfect: “I just hope it’s not somebody who I think it might be.” “It was,” a narrator tells us, “the last time street guys would ever be given such an opportunity.” All the mob had to do was take care of business. But when Ace met Ginger and when Nicky came to town, the pieces were in place for the mob to become the biggest loser in Vegas history. “We screwed up good,” Nicky says, not using exactly those words (144-45)".  If you can't tell yet, even with a bit of editing to make the words focus more on plot description, Roger seems to be a pretty happy fan of this picture.  Which just goes to makes everything I'm about to say next somewhat awkward.

I started out this review by asking a simple question.  Is it possible for even great directors to have their off days.  Those occasions where all the usual magic just won't come together, the way it tends to when everything is going right and the film is assembling itself into the best possible narrative?  Well, in general, I think the obvious answer is that I've never run across the career of even the most talented filmmakers in Hollywood's history where that wasn't the case.  We remember Francis Ford Coppola or John Ford more for films like The Godfather and The Searchers, respectively.  While pictures like The Horse Soldiers and Peggy Sue Got Married tend to be lost down the memory hole, sometimes with good reason.  This is something that bears repeating, even undeniably Great artists have their off days, and Scorsese is no different from the rest in this regard.  He's going to go down as one of the Masters of Cinema, yet it'll probably never be for a film like this.  If I had to pinpoint the main problem with this picture, then it all seems to come down to one major issue.  It all amounts to a general lack of focus, and a lot the reason for that seems to result from the ultimate predicament the movie finds itself in.  Throughout it's runtime, I kept getting the vibe of what I can only describe as a genuine lack of interest on the part of the director.  Nor do I think it's too difficult to see why this should be the case.

The simplest part of it might stem from the fact that while familiarity didn't exactly breed contempt for this project, it did lend a certain lack of excitement to the proceedings.  That's because Scorsese never seems to have escaped the nagging sensation of fear that he might be repeating himself.  Going back to the same well that worked like a charm the first time, only to discover that the original spring seemed to have run dry for the moment.  It's also possible to conjecture a reasonable answer for why this should be the result, at least in this case.  Martin Scorsese's entire career consists in the making of crime pictures.  He takes to the genre with all the natural effortlessness that John Ford did for Westerns.  In each case, the cause was the same.  It's just something he's just good at.  He's been telling tales about gangsters and low-life hoods his whole career.  It's not something he's ever grown tired of, yet the outcome of a film like Casino tells me he knows what its like to get caught just spinning his wheels with nothing much to do.  That's the main problem with the film, and it doesn't take long for the astute viewer to realize that this vehicle lacks all the energy, drive, and interest of even more lighthearted fair, such as The Color of Money.  That was a work-for-hire flick, and yet its got this life and vibrancy that Casino lacks.

As always, the explanations we're for on this problem are to be found in the story proper.  Here's where I realize that I've got to backtrack a bit and remind everyone that this picture was based off of true events.  All three of the main characters are based off of actual people who lived (and in some cases died) brining the major plot points of Casino into public eye as historical reality.  There really was an Ace Rothstein, Nicky Santoro (real name: Tony "The Ant" Spilotro), and even a girl who was the real model for Sharon Stone's character.  What this meant in actual practice was that the director found himself in a somewhat amusing situation.  Scorsese was tasked with being as true and accurate to history as possible, while at the same time having to walk around tripwires that could come in the form of lawsuits by various ex-mobsters and organized crime members if they felt the final product made them look bad.  It's reasons like this which explain certain omissions of detail that so perplexed critics like Nick Hodges above.  The studio mandated that Marty not stray too far into areas where Universal felt they might not be able to afford legal coverage for any elements that might end them up in court over a petty lawsuit from some ex-mook looking to skim a little off the top of the studio's cashflow for himself.  That's why everyone says Ace and Nicky all hail from "Back Home" instead of Chicago.

It's a pretty ridiculous situation to find yourself in just for the sake of trying to see if you can make a little Art now and then.  So or course this is how things turned out while the film was in production.  Think of it as one of the dumber comedy of errors to ever happen on a set, and you've got a good idea of the whole behind-the-scenes affair.  Needless to say, this is another aspect that didn't do the film's plot any favors.  However, if I'm being honest, my big takeaway is that if anything, this might have been the kind of situation where choosing to shackle yourself too closely to the historic facts might have been the director's biggest detriment.  The trouble with relying on a history like this is less that it's highly episodic, some of the best books and films out there can be described fitting this mold.  The real trouble is that none of it works toward anything that could be described as a real dramatic payoff.  Now, to be fair, there's one very good response to make with this accusation.  The short and sweet version goes as follows.  "That's life, what else did you expect.  Where does it say in the instruction manual that reality has to follow a linear three-act structure with rising and falling action?  Also, you do know there's a distinction to be made between fact and fiction, right"?  The good news is this is all something Scorsese is very well aware of.  Even with a ton of studio restrictions imposed on him, you can tell the director is trying his damnedest to to be as true to the historical record as he's been able to know it.  The trouble is that it's exactly this disconnect between real life and fiction that ends up hampering the film's prospects.

It places the director, the cast, and us as the audience in an ironic bind.  All of the filmmakers involved have to try and see how much drama they can squeeze out of a premise drawn from real life.  The problem for all parties concerned is that this is one of those cases where a story drawn from the headlines just can't seem to provide much in the way of any narrative interest that will keep the viewer riveted to their seats from start to finish.  What isolates Casino from a film like Black Klansman is in the way each handles the direction of their respective stories.  Both pictures are made up of these real life crime stories, where each project is tasked with keeping several plot plates spinning in the air at once.  Now, Scorsese and Spike Lee are able to do just that, yet the results for each work couldn't be more different.  Lee's efforts result in everything building up to this great, dramatic crescendo as a gang of undercover cops try to take down a local chapter of the KKK, whilst dealing with their own racial conflicts.  It is possible to claim that Scorsese finds himself working with a play in which the underlying problem is much the same, except for the interesting twist where the conflict arises amongst a community that is tight-knit and insular.  The implication being that any society that builds itself upon a fundamentally toxic foundation ends up serving just one goal, which is to cancel itself out.  It sounds interesting as hell on paper, and yet Scorsese can never match Lee in a proper sense of dramatic payoff.

The basic setup of this picture is one that Scorsese returns to time and again.  The rise and fall of a criminal mastermind, with the plot's main focus being an exploration of the hubris and personal flaws that cause everyone involved to crash and burn.  The director's entire oeuvre might be described as a Cinema of Sinners.  It's the ruling fascination of the artist, and so always he returns to the subject in one way or another.  And always he's at his best when he can find the kind of narrative he can sink his teeth into.  The great lesson of Casino is that it showcases what happens when the filmmaker either can't find the right way into the sort of material he's best at, or else there's just not much there to work with.  The latter problem seems to lie at the heart of this flick, and it shows up in the final results on screen.  In all of their best work, De Niro and Pesci tend to come off as these dynamic and vibrant actors.  In fact, if you want to see proof of just how good an actor De Niro's co-star is, go and watch his performance in a later Scorsese effort, The Irishmen.  That's where you get a chance to see a level of skill and dramatic nuance you wouldn't otherwise expect of the funny man from Home Alone.  The Irish flick is a stellar example of what happens when a good cast is given a great and riveting script to perform with.  It's a film where you can tell all the pieces came together seamlessly, leaving the actors in their element.

None of that happens here with Casino.  Instead, the greatest takeaway I've got from this picture is a pervading sense of boredom.  The same two talents are there, like always.  Yet you can never escape the sense that everyone is just going through the motions, at best.  At worst (and this probably amounts to the same thing) what we've got here is perhaps the textbook example of what De Niro and Pesci look like when they're operating on autopilot.  The whole thing becomes a dull and tedious slog pretty fast.  This is something I began to get a feel for soon enough when it became clear that nothing much of consequence was going to happen with this plot.  What I don't think was anticipating was to find out how talent sometimes becomes a caricature of itself.  What I mean by that is all contained in a scene that was meant to be sort of pivotal to the action, where Nicky and Ace both confront each other out in the desert over all the bad turns of luck they've been having on their respective sides of the business.  Now to be fair, it is possible to understand the logic of this scene.  Everything is starting to go south for the story's two main leads, and each one thinks the other is to blame for it.  So they've got to see if they can have it out with each other while avoiding the worst sort of results that can happen in the Mob life.  Nick and Ace have to got to see if they can settle this business like gentlemen, only tempers are hot.

So the basics of the scene are these two potential kingpins, powerful names in the Mafia whose "business tactics" are starting to clash in a way that is creating a ton of problems and brining on the heat from the Feds.  That means the question is whose really at fault here, and who (if anyone) should shoulder the blame?  Maybe it would be best for one or the other to skip town for a while.  Lay low until the heat dies, then come back and see what kind of deals can be worked out on a more solid bases, and with a level-headed approach to the regular Skim.  The trouble is these two are the top of their game in this side of the Operation, and neither of these gangsters wants to back down from the territory they've staked out for themselves.  Nicky doesn't want to let go of what he sees as a goose laying golden eggs, and the only way you can get a guy like Ace to leave the casino business is when you've pried it all out of his cold, dead hands.  Only trouble is that's just what might happen when you're dealing with a guy as unhinged as Nicky "The Ant".  So the main character goes into this meeting wondering if he's even going to be allowed to walk away on his own two feat.  I mean for all he knows, this is the last time anyone is going to see him alive.  If this sounds even somewhat riveting on paper, then I just wish all of that drama and tension could translate well onto the screen.  Instead, it was while I was busy watching this little match up unfold that I had the most hilarious realization that I've known.

I think I began to understand just why the makers of Animaniacs thought that these two guys could make for a great comedic parody of the modern Gangster Film.  If little kids of the 90s ever knew anything about Scorsese and his regular roster of actors, then it was from the "Goodfeathers" segments on the old Warner Bros. cartoon.  In particular, those characters never missed an opportunity to take that particular moment in the Henry Hill saga (it's the one where Pesci asks Ray Liotta, "Funny how?  Like I'm a clown, I fucking amuse you"?) and turning into a running gag that the writers could apply just one riff after another on for the sake of a laugh.  It must have worked a hell of a lot, because this was a well that Animaniacs was comfortable going back to on multiple occasions.  It's the kind of thing where, when you're a kid, you think nothing of it.  It's one of those things in a regular weekday afternoon block.  Where your basic reaction goes something like, "Oh yeah, ya know, that's funny, and all that".  So try and imagine the surreal sense of whiplash recall you can get when you set there watching the original two actors the Animaniacs skit was drawn from, and you see them both turn into what can only be described as a pair of live-action Warner parodies.  It's one of the strangest, yet unintentionally hilarious things I've ever seen in my entire, gosh-damned life.  The fact that I went into this flick not expecting it to happen amounts to this weird bit of accidental icing on the cake, into the bargain.

There's just one problem with all of these results.  They clash with the fundamental nature of the scene, and what it's meant to accomplish.  The way it's written clearly demarcates this sequence as a pivotal moment between these two titans of organized crime.  Something that's going to determine how these two clashing egos are going to set the future for the Mob in Las Vegas.  In the grand scheme of things, it can be described as small potatoes, yet it means either the sooth continuation, or else the end of a whole world for guys like Nick and Ace.  So it's meant as a high stakes confrontation within the world of the Mafia.  And the fact that this all seems to have been drawn from real life probably means that the sense of what's at stake here should be all the more higher.  Instead, it's like I've just told you.  I'm watching a pair of grown men turn themselves into cartoon characters right before my eyes.  If I'm honest, the fact that this was the most ironically enjoyable moment of the film for me makes me wonder if maybe that should have been taken as a clue.  Maybe things would have worked better if Scorsese had decided to have some fun with his regular material for once, and made a complete, comedic satire out of the whole deal.  Get De Niro and Pesci to send up their own regular tough guy personas as mapped out by pop-culture.  Let the director poke some fun at his own constant tropes and hang ups, share the laughter.

That sort of thing.  If the director of a film like Taxi Driver had been able to create a satire of his themes and ideas, and been able to pull it off, then perhaps Martin Scorsese would be enjoying a greater deal of pop cultural awareness, rather than the highly sophisticated yet niche appreciation he's had to make do with in the way of critical acclaim.  Who knows?  Another way to do it would have been to keep the serious, straightforward tone, yet maybe streamline the plot a little by not saddling yourself with having to tell an actual piece of history.  Nick Hodges claims that Casino should be read as a work of historical fiction, yet if that's the case, then I'm afraid the director should have gone even further afield into the realms of make-believe in order for this plot to work.  Maybe one way this could have been done was to cut out the vast majority of the backstory, leaving the sole focus on Ace, Nicky, and Ginger.  From there, it might have made more sense to have this alternate scenario be like this whole, suspenseful cat-and-mouse game.  Open with a scene of the three main leads hanging out, where at first it looks like everyone is all chummy together and on the same page, only for a series of hints and clues both in the dialogue, the acting, and the visuals to clue the audience in that this is really just a facade, and that we've walked into the beginnings of a classic Film Noir a murder scheme right at the start.  Ginger and Santoro could already be plotting on how to take Ace out of the picture, and have it all for themselves.

The trick is that Rothstein already knows about this, so he's got his guard up.  From there, the rest of the film could play out like a clever game of chess, where various attempts are made on Ace's life, and we follow along as he has to escape from all the mousetraps that his wife and "best friend" set up for him.  All while trying not to let any of this go public, because the Mob has a good thing going with the casinos, and if any word of the trouble he's having with Nicky and Ginger gets around to the Outfit "back home", then it could be considered bad for "regular business".  Ace could come to be considered too much of a "personal liability" to his Bosses in Chicago, and then he could be in deep shit.  So we follow the main character along as he decides to keep his mouth shut, all while trying to juggle the various threats to his life.  At the same time trying to keep the Strip and the Skim running as smoothly as you can when you have to look over your shoulder every second.  I would also make Ace more of a typical Scorsese protagonist.  Humanize him, in other words.  Let him have some genuine self-reflective moments where he's consumed by doubts, and even thoughts of guilt over how far south things have gone, not just with the Operation, but also his whole life in general.  Let this version of Ace have some scenes where he ponders of just skipping town, and leaving it all to Ginger and Nick.  Start a new life for himself somewhere else where the cops can't hassle you.  Then, of course, the dread could set in.

Ace should realize that even if he decided to make a break for it, with a rap sheet like his, there's no way the cops would want to leave him alone.  Even worse, the Mob never takes kindly to its "employees" just "Quitting the Job" like that.  If having to deal with the deadly games of Nicky and Ginger is bad, then having to spend the rest of your life on the on the lookout for hitmen from Chicago is even worse.  So we follow along as Ace tries to keep his head down and out of trouble, all the while wondering when and if he's about to lose everything, maybe even his soul.  At least there's one idea for how a better version of this film could have gone.  As things stand, I think Scorsese himself summed up this film's problem.  "Scorsese himself described the film as 'A three-hour story full of action, and events.  But absolutely devoid of plot (web)".  Strange as this my sound, I couldn't be more grateful to learn that this is what he thought of the picture.  It tells me we're dealing with an artist who is aware of what it is that makes any movie, no matter it's budget or overall quality, work well in the end.  What this also means is that for a guy whose entire life has been molded by moving images, Scorsese has a very admirable literary frame of mind and thinking.  He understands that at the end of the day, the book is the boss.  Any story, regardless of medium, can only live or thrive on the basis of its writing; not the visuals.

The lack of this fundamental ingredient means that a film like Casino is stuck in the unenviable position of having to fight an uphill battle.  And it's the kind of situation where the film just can't win.  The main reason is all on account of how there's no real coherent narrative to tie everything together in a meaningful way that would get audiences to care about what happens to the cast.  All we're left with is a tired looking puppet show where the crew is being put through their motions, and no more.  There's a lot more going on in most of Scorsese's other films rather than this one.  In retrospect, I am curious if maybe they should have dug a little deeper and discovered what we now know about the real life events behind this film, which is that the inspiration for Sam Rothstein was in fact an FBI informant and plant who was in Vegas as part of a plan by the government to weed the Mafia out of its own criminal empire.  It would have made for a much more interesting scenario as we followed De Niro's character where he's trying to see how far he can go back to walking on the wild side while still keeping in line with law and order.  It's the same sort of basic moral conundrum that a lot of the main cast of The Departed has to deal with.  So going that route with Casino would have at least made it an interesting trial run for the later DiCaprio film.  As things stand, all we've got is a polished up turd on our hands.

This is not meant to claim that the director had lost his talent.  I think a lot of Scorsese's recent history has gone on to prove that's far from the case.  Instead, all this film does is force me to admit that here we've got an example of the maestro on an off-day.  It might almost be more accurate to claim that this is the kind of movie that he churns out if Marty is taking a day off.  The reason I'm able to make that kind of claim with a decent bit of assurance is because the director admitted as much.  Later on, Scorsese seems to have claimed that the only reason Casino exists is because Universal made him some kind of sweetheart deal that he just couldn't turn down.  They wanted to have their own version of Goodfellas that would allow them the hope of competing with the director's previous Mob picture, for some damn reason I can only chalk up to professional jealousy.  So they commissioned a script with a lot of the same plot beats as the story of Henry Hill, then get the director and some of the main cast of that film to work in what is essentially a carbon-copy.  The most interesting part about this revelation is that Marty said, sure, okay (web).  If I had to take an educated guess as to why he would go ahead and participate in what is effectively an accidental parody of his style of storytelling, then it might have something to do with the fact that his very next film was a passion project by the name of Kundun.

That's a very introspective and heartfelt look at the life of the real world Dali Llama, and it's clear that the director is devoting a greater deal of time, attention, and care to every single frame of this now obscure bio-drama.  So, perhaps there's the real reason behind Casino.  Scorsese has gone on record as saying that he's learned the value of splitting his work into two separate categories.  These would be his Passion Projects, and another type which could best be described as Financing Work.  The Passion Projects are the ones where you can see the director pretty much pouring out his heart and soul to the audience.  It's where you get films like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and Silence.  Each of those pictures has an intensity that can only be said to come from wherever it is that the artist lives.  The Finance Works are exactly what its name implies.  They are studio offers that the director takes up in order to get the money he needs so that a Passion Project like Silence can be gotten off the ground.  

This is where you get films like The Aviator, shows like Boardwalk Empire, and even Michael Jackson's music video for the hit single Bad.  Casino is a film that definitely belongs in the latter category, and the ultimate irony there is that being able to figure out that this is where the picture comes from sort of means it kind of has even less of a reason to exist than when we started.  This shouldn't be a scorn on all of the director's Finance Work.  Some of them can even be ranked among his greatest efforts, just not this one.  In the end, Casino is just a way station on the road to better things.  Martin Scorsese has made a lot of great films in his career, and all of them are worth checking out.  Casino isn't one of them.