Movie Madness!

Written by Brian Thomas

Casino Goodfellas Team Returns to Crime Scene In 1990, Martin Scorcese directed a crime movie classic. Adapted from Nicholas Pileggi's true crime book Wiseguys, Goodfellas was a scary, funny and fascinating look at young men making their way in the New York of the '60s, to whom organized crime was the only life known, told in a semidocumentary style that kept the action flowing and audiences riveted from start to finish. Robert DeNiro played the rising mobster trying to keep his activities under control. Joe Pesci's character was a crude and violent psycho, given to fits of savagery at the slightest provocation. These Scorcese regulars were surrounded by scores of talented and familiar faces, including singer Jerry Vale as himself. For Casino, all of these talents have been reassembled for what ultimately be considered a companion piece to Goodfellas, this time examining the mob's activities in Las Vegas during the 1970s. Scorcese's direction is, if anything, even more creative, matching the flash and glitter of the Vegas strip. DeNiro and Pesci return in what are essentially the same roles - DeNiro as a master gambler hired by an eastern syndicate to oversee the operation of their Vegas casino, while Pesci is DeNiro's lifelong friend, a vicious little thief sent to keep an eye on DeNiro, and the mob's other Vegas operations. Both characters alternate in the narration, showing in minute detail the inner workings of the casino, as the mobsters made fortunes in ways that would have been clearly illegal anywhere else. These anecdotal scenes showing all the intricate background to the main action is so interesting and amusing, that we're over an hour into the picture before we know it. Another cast of wonderful character actors turns up. Don Rickles as DeNiro's right hand man. Dick Smothers as a corrupt politician. James Woods as a preening pimp. L. Q. Jones as a state gaming official. Fellow critic Joe Bob Briggs (aka John Bloom) as Jones' inept nephew. Steve Allen, Jayne Meadows, Sigfried & Roy (and even Jerry Vale again) as themselves. All these faces add depth and color to the background of every scene. But by the second half of this epic picture, we begin to run out of background and the main plot takes center stage - the inherent flaws of our two leads eventually begins to destroy them. DeNiro struggles to maintain his grip on the casino, despite the negative associations of his friendship with the crude Pesci, while Pesci can't understand why his tried-and-true methods of brutality, torture, and murder aren't working as well in wide- open Vegas as they did back home. And all the while the assembled armies of law enforcement wait patiently for the criminal organization to tear itself apart. In Goodfellas, DeNiro and Pesci's parts were mainly in support of that of Ray Liotta, who clearly emerged as the main character. Here they are at the forefront, but if you've already seen Goodfellas then you've seen this act before - and while the drama that unfolds is never less than interesting, that familiarity does damage to the characters ability to engage our sympathy. Adding to this problem is the fact that we're shown DeNiro blowing up in his car at the very beginning of the picture, which leads one to believe that his fate is already known, destroying a great deal of suspense. Taking up a great deal of the slack is Sharon Stone as Ginger, the gold-digger that marries DeNiro for his money. Stone deserves a lot of credit for wringing more than ever could be asked for from the role - she outshines her costars in every scene she's in, providing a full-blooded portrait of a beautiful bad girl who grabs the big prize, only to have her inner demons twist her into a raving, corneous nightmare, strung out on booze and amphetamines and willing to tear down anything and anyone that crosses her path. Her performance here, along with her deft work in Sam Raimi's The Quick and the Dead, should go a long ways toward lifting her out of the sex thriller parts that made her a star. And so, Casino emerges as a strange beast of a picture - too much like its predecessor to stand out on its own, but also too much like it to fail. The work of every artist involved, from Scorcese down to the dazzling title designs of veteran craftsman Saul Bass, is always well worth watching and never less than entertaining. Even the soundtrack, which (like Goodfellas) is mainly composed of a rich parade of timely pop music, provides a few surprises - who'd ever have expected three Devo tunes in a Scorcese picture?! But with a three hour running time, and a plot that relies too much on soap opera dramatics, Casino just may be too much of a Good- thing. Front Page || Movie Madness Copyright © 1994-1997 by Virtual Press/Global Internet Solutions. Internet Daily News and its respective columns are trademarks of Virtual Press/Global Internet Solutions.