It's 3 AM—Time To Re-Watch ‘Casino’

"In Vegas, everybody's gotta watch everybody else."

Nov 01, 2024

I rewatched Martin Scorsese’s romantic ode to old school Sin City, Casino, on Amazon Prime at 3 AM yesterday. I haven’t been sleeping well these past few months, and when insomnia strikes, I put on movies I love while I try to fall asleep on the couch. Last month, the sun rose while I finished watching a personal favorite from my childhood, the deeply silly ’80s sci-fi fantasy Krull, about a boy with a razor frisbee and his best friend, a Cyclops.

I have probably seen 1995’s Casino more than *holds up all ten fingers* this many times. And it never changes—it’s a delightful picture show about hoodlums, hitmen, and other assorted do-badders, and it is a dependable good time—a natural cure for late-night anxiety.

If I can't dream, I may as well watch one.

My Casino rewatch was random. I did not roll out of bed and groggily think, “I need to watch Joe Pesci put a man’s head in a vice.” No. I simply turned on my TV, picked my preferred streaming service, and voila! Casino was there. The Amazon Prime algorithm knew what I needed. And I needed peak mid-90s Robert DeNiro squinting, smoking, and tilting his head.

So I rented it. Worth it.

But, mostly, I just wanted a good movie I had seen before. I wasn’t in the mood to take a risk. This was not a job for Criterion or Mubi. I did not want something new or challenging. At three in the morning, I want to zone out to a hit, a blockbuster—a timeless popcorn classic, usually a genre flick made by talented people who like telling stories. But these must be movies I have seen—like songs I can listen to over and over again.

Other examples of flicks that fit this category: Total Recall, Tarantino’s revisionist Nazi history Inglourious Basterds, and Moonstruck, the most perfect romantic comedy ever made. Also: Starship Troopers and Moneyball. I could probably rewatch the serial killer thriller Zodiac every other day. I am overdue for another viewing of No Country For Old Men, a high-brow modern cowboy shoot ‘em up by the Coens.

And, of course, there’s Casino. If Casino were a free drink served at a blackjack table, it'd be a whiskey sour. This movie is well-made—Scorsese is a master. It is never dull. The violence is repulsive, and the cast oozes greed. Casino gets grosser every time I see it. I recommend watching it if you're tossing and turning because it's fun—everybody's gross in this movie; what a great time. Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese's mob opera loves—without judgment—the weasel-eat-weasel world of 1970s Las Vegas, a city built in the middle of nowhere by the goombahs in suits.

Casino was a sort of spiritual sequel to Scorsese’s fuggedaboudit classic Goodfellas, a grimy, glamorous, near-perfect rocket of a movie about death by easy money that is as good now as when it was released in 1990. Casino reunites two of the stars of Goodfellas, De Niro and Joe Pesci, a human stick of dynamite. It’s also the second movie in an unofficial trilogy about the mob.

The Irishman was released in 2019 on Netflix, the third reunion between De Niro, Pesci, and Scorsese, and this time, it was joined by Oscar-winning actor Al Pacino, no stranger to starring in mob films. The Irishman is an existential mob movie. You can’t bury death in a shallow grave. It comes for everyone, even made men. It’s a hypnotic and almost mournful deconstruction of the gangster genre and the 20th century, when shadow criminal organizations were entangled with labor unions and the government, and no one blinked an eye.

Goodfellas was a morality play. The Irishman was about mortality. But Casino is everything fun about gangster movies without any of the angst. It’s a guilt-free production. These mooks are rotten to the core but, hey, they’re having fun. Casino teaches similar lessons to Goodfellas. For instance, there is no honor among thieves. One of the main themes of The Irishman is also touched upon in Scorsese’s portrait of Vegas when it was good and dirty. Namely, that history obliterates all legacies. Money cannot buy immortality.

But Casino never lectures. I don’t think Scorsese is given enough credit as a thoughtful artist. He’s made movies that explore and criticize religion and politics and the American dream. But he’s also a helluva showman, and Casino is a cracking good example of him at his most crowd-pleasing. I’d count Cape Fear and The Departed as other examples of Scorsese trying his best to please audiences.

Ironically, The Departed won him an Oscar in 2007—I don't think it's one of his best. The Departed hums with cinematic ingenuity, sure, but it's just high-end pulp fiction starring hunks in the prime buoyed by classic rock and ruined by Jack Nicholson's winking, messy performance.

Casino is nothing but murder and money and sex. It’s a predictable parade of hard-boiled tropes. Crisp fifty-dollar bills are peeled off. Guns are tucked into pants. Orders are given and carried out. Casino is a buffet that offers heaping servings of what Scorsese does best: tough talk, cringe-worthy gore, and documentary-style voiceovers explaining how underworld business is done. The scenes where the main characters explain how golden age Las Vegas casinos made their money are utterly captivating.

But that doesn't mean Scorsese isn't exploring fascinating themes underneath the slot machine’s glow, like the relationship between crime, legitimate business, and masculinity. There are few pop culture chroniclers of male relationships with Scorsese's track record. De Niro and Pesci play co-dependent divas in an abusive relationship—De Niro is passive-aggressive, and Pesci is a psycho. They’re funny and terrifying all at once. Another topic Scorsese explores is the root of all evil. In Casino, capitalism is like a zombie King Midas; everything it touches dies.

As Sam Rothstein, De Niro turns in a surprisingly nuanced performance as a goose who lays golden eggs — a sort of gambling genius beloved by the mob who uses his brains more than muscle. Joe Pesci returns as another Mafia psychopath whose eventual death is one of the most gut-wrenching scenes of violence committed in the film. It just never ends, even after Pesci’s bloodied character starts begging.

Together, they’re clearly having fun playing a couple of mooks, rotten to the core.

The movie also includes a rare dramatic turn by Rat Pack-era insult comic Don Rickles and a greasy performance by current right-wing banshee James Woods, back when he was a brilliant serpentine actor. If cocaine wore a mustache, cocaine would look like James Woods in Casino.

Sharon Stone has never gotten enough respect for her career, but here’s hoping modern audiences take notice. She is a conventional beauty with unconventional darkness behind her eyes.

In Casino, Sharon Stone plays Ginger McKenna, a charismatic hustler who is part Amazon, part junky. Stone’s Ginger may be the best female character in a Scorsese movie, which she steals whenever she’s on-screen. Stone’s performance is brittle and jagged, smart, and hopeless all at once. It’s too bad she wasn’t cast in The Irishman because she acts laps around De Niro and Pesci.

Scorsese is the Patron Saint of New York filmmaking, but he's having a torrid affair with Vegas in Casino. Unlike the mean streets of Gotham, Vegas shines like a new penny at the bottom of a wishing well.

In some ways, Vegas is the most American of metropolises, an endless all-you-can-eat-buffet that eats your soul. Most people get this city wrong. It’s an honest place because it is so brazenly open about its raison d'être: to drain the bank accounts of the hopeful, rich or poor. Wall Street bullshits and Washington lies, but Vegas makes eye contact and wishes you luck, sucker.

Scorsese respects Vegas. She’s his real star. No one gets a happy ending except for her.

I change my mind about movies all the time. There are movies I loved as a kid that I can’t through now. There are movies I thought were insufferable when I first saw them, and then I grew up a little. And then there’s Casino. It is a movie that’s always there for me, even in the wee hours of the morning.

Ugh. I hope I can sleep tonight.