Scorsese gives us the same kind of insider dope that got us high in GoodFellas,but in Casino it’s pure narcotic. It’s all journalistic exposition, voiceovers done by a breathy Robert De Niro and a hyperactive Joe Pesci tracing a web of corruption that spindles out from a casino count room, to the Teamsters union, through local desert politicians, to a smoke choked cave in Kansas city filled with Midwestern mooks getting rich off the skim. While it may not be Marty’s best gangster movie of all time, it is his best epic. It’s also because Casino is a dazzling period piece, a penetrating historical work that captures Las Vegas better than any other movie that has come before or after it. It’s partly because Ace Rothstein, Casino’s main character, is a far more fascinating creature than Henry Hill. It’s a shame because Casino is a more substantial, artful, and engrossing movie than GoodFellas. However, Casino, wide and ambitious in scope, is too often dismissed as "wiseguys go west" another gangster flick that doesn’t live up to the esteem of Martin Scorsese’s street hood masterpiece. Why does it feel impossible to talk about Casino, an undervalued and underrated movie, without talking about GoodFellas? The two, in a sense, are inexorably linked, partly because of the mob connection, the "based on a true story" milieu of the subject matter, and, of course, Robert De Niro. Is Casino, perhaps, just a smidge better? You bet.
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