Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci play mafia men sent from Chicago to Las Vegas, scamming money off a casino’s profits for the bosses back home. They become rivals and enemies, which is a problem because Pesci’s character is essentially a psychopath. Meanwhile, Sharon Stone is an ex-prostitute who marries De Niro but is still attached to her pimp boyfriend played by James Woods.
It’s similar to Goodfellas in terms of subject matter and tone, but that film is far more appealing because it has a character you can relate to. There’s no one in Casino that you can identify with at all. Also, the violence is really disturbing – especially the head-in-a-vice and buried-alive scenes. I’m not sure I will ever get those images out of my mind.
The use of music was a little excessive. Countless great songs are jammed in, which is fun, but sometimes it's at the expense of light and shade. I craved a little more space.
De Niro is as good as ever, but it remains a flawed film that seems like it could have been a masterpiece and somehow didn’t turn out that way.
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