Casino

Watching "Casino" and "Goodfellas," two late-period Martin Scorcese films, is sort of like listening to U2's music from the past ten years. The themes are the same, the personas are the same, but somehow the work just seems like a hollow imitation of former glories.

Based on a true story, "Casino" is not a complicated film. It's an excruciating, three-hour tale of the rise and fall of Sam Rothstein (Robert De Niro) and Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci). The two childhood friends form an empire in Vegas, only to be brought down by their egos, the feds, and Sam's drug-addled wife (Sharon Stone).

The film has three major problems. The first is the incessant use of voice-over narration. Critics will usually bristle at too much of this technique, yet Scorcese uses voice-overs for almost the entirety of the first half of the film and gets a free pass, much as he did for the same offense in "Goodfellas."

The voice-overs reduce the film to a book on tape with pretty pictures accompanying it. They suck the drama out of the story, giving us just the facts, ma'am. Perhaps most egregiously, they completely waste the talents of one of the greatest actors of all time, De Niro, who's asked to nothing more than walk around in a suit and narrate his actions for much of the film.

A related problem is the excessive running time of "Casino." A standard treatment of this story would give us a few scenes of Sam's early days as a bookie, followed by his big break into Vegas and rise to the top. The second half of the movie would show his demise after meeting his future wife.

It could all be done in two hours. But Scorcese spends too much time in the casino, comprehensively cataloging Sam's strengths as a manager and the mob bosses' shady dealings behind the scenes. The level of detail is excessive; most of it can be inferred. Moreover, all of these crooks' maneuverings are complicated, which is why Scorcese has to rely on the narration as a crutch to explain it to us.

And speaking of crutches, we now come to the third major problem: the incessant pop songs on the soundtrack. Scorcese generally has good taste, but when music is used constantly it loses its effectiveness, becoming more like white noise. He doesn't help his cause by choosing a lot of similar sounding songs, mostly soul and whatever Rolling Stones track he has in his head at a given moment. (I'm a big Stones fan, but Scorcese's obsession is ridiculous. Someone at the MPAA needs to put a limit on the number of songs he can use per film by Mick and the boys.)

The shame of it is that if even half of what Scorcese recounts is true, this is a hell of a story. At one point Santoro apparently needed to change cars six times to lose his tail--six times!

Truth be told, Scorcese does find his rhythm in the final third of the film, chronicling the downfall of his three central characters with the brutal energy that made him a legend. Unfortunately, that vitality is buried underneath so much exposition and gloss that "Casino" feels more like an all-night bender than a jolt of adrenaline.