Casino should instead be taken on its own merits as it explores the saga of Sam Rothstein (Robert De Niro) a gangster assigned to oversee a Las Vegas casino. At first just a position to help line up the pockets of Chicago gangsters, Rothstein really gets enamored with the life of big-time Vegas casino owner. This is no longer just a mob front for him, it's a whole life for him. It's a delicate life, though, and the arrival of Sam Rothstein's life-long best friend Nicky Santaro (Joe Pesci) begins to jeopardize things due to how ruthless Santaro is in every aspect of his life. The toxic relationship between the abusive Rothstein and his wife Ginger McKenna (Sharon Stone) also adds further complications to what's supposed to be a paradise on Earth.
Let's get the flaws of Casino out of the way first before we get to the far greater amount of virtues of this production. Yes, it does run a tad long, which I know is the most basic critique of a film running three hours. I've got no problem with films with elongated running times and plenty of other Scorsese movies (like his 2016 gem Silence) have utilized every second of their extensive runtimes beautifully. In the case of Casino, it's not that the film is 178 minutes long that's the issue, it's simply that the round-and-round cycle of abusive behavior between Rothstein, Santaro and McKenna does end up feeling a touch repetitive once we reach the heart of the third act. Once you see Rothstein physically abusing his wife once, you get the picture and wish Casino could find other ways from there to visually manifest the concept of how excess has corrupted these people's lives.
Aside from that minor pacing quibble and some narration that feels extraneous, though, Casino is just superb filmmaking. Nicholas Pileggi and Martin Scorsese concoct a complex web of interconnected mob debauchery that could have become convoluted in the hands of a lesser filmmaker but Scorsese deftly moves across the expansive canvas behind Rothstein's gambling-financed empire. Instead of feeling needlessly complex, Casino's ever-expanding world is packed dense with details, even the most seemingly throwaway side characters have distinct personalities and voices to express. These pronounced individuals are incredibly entertaining to watch and it's even more entertaining to see how Scorsese and Pileggi decide to have the interactions between these characters lead to a gradual destruction of what Rothstein has crafted.
Rothstein's empire is built on deceit and greed, it's basically built on water-soaked sand from the start. It cannot last forever, as made clear by the opening scene, and this sense of inevitability (which I placed a greater emphasis on in my aforementioned Spool piece on Casino) lends an interesting layer of darkness to all the elements at play in this story all about the ritzy glitzy lights of Las Vegas. That layer is especially interesting in how it manifests in the performance. De Niro's thoroughly assured nature in his on-screen turn as Rothstein, for instance, is played in noticeable contrast to his voice-over work that's more reserved, more bruised, more knowledgeable. The narration for Casino has a sense of melancholy to it, both for the Las Vegas that was (one of the final scenes shows corporations taking over the casinos) and the behavior of the people that led to its destruction.
Joe Pesci, per usual for a Scorsese picture, delivers the best work of the film in his portrayal of Nicky Santaro, a guy whose got no inhibitions on being as violent as possible whenever the chance arises. Like Rothstein, Santaro has also got a confident streak about him, but whereas Rothstein has got the expansive successful casino to fuel his confidence, Santaro is constantly undervalued and minimized by his mobster superiors. Pesci makes the characters brash bravado something he has to have because nobody else believes in him. It'd be kind of a touching personality if Santaro wasn't so committed to breaking skulls. It's easy to lump the various Scorsese gangster movies together, but Casino is so good and rich with its own personality and unique performances that it'd be a shame to just toss it off as Goodfellas 2.0.
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