Last Night I Watched: Casino

There are very few films which show off the profession of organised crime without glorifying it, least of all Martin Scorsese’s filmography. There is, however, one outstanding exception to this rule: Casino. This is what I think makes it so absent from discussions about the director’s best film, a discussion usually populated with classics like Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, Raging Bull and The Wolf of Wall Street.

Goodfellas, Casino and The Wolf of Wall Street are thought to form a trilogy of-sorts, all being very similar in their style and themes. All three films rely heavily on narration, freeze frames and long takes, with themes in each story of greed and masculinity. Goodfellas takes us into the world of Henry Hill, a classic New York gangster, Casino takes us into the dark underbelly of Las Vegas gambling venues through the eyes of Sam Rothswell, while The Wolf of Wall Street shows us the shady side of the life of stock broker Jordan Belfort.

There are very few films which show off the profession of organised crime without glorifying it

Each of these characters – Hill, Rothswell and Belfort – narrate through portions of their respective films, giving us a biased outlook on the events of the film. There’s an inherent appeal to these films about violent crime and vast wealth. For most of us living mundane lives, it’s interesting to observe and project ourselves onto the situations, fantasising about having all the wealth and power shown to us through these characters. This is something that Goodfellas and The Wolf of Wall Street try to latch onto, especially with the main characters showing off about the lives they lead.

Casino takes a different approach, however; it instead shows Sam (Robert De Niro) being very critical of the illegal activities of his mob-affiliated friend Nikki (Joe Pesci). Sam is a bookie; thus, he’s never had many ties to organised crime aside from those assigned to look after the Casino business while he runs it. Instead of us having a larger-than-life lead character showing off the perks of his lifestyle, we have Sam, who is focused solely on running his business.

There’s an inherent appeal to these films about violent crime and vast wealth

Sam is different from many Scorsese protagonists in this way. While we have scenes where he is violent, there is only one scene where he is the clear aggressor. Another way that Sam is different from most Scorsese protagonists is his treatment of his wife, Ginger (Sharron Stone). In most Scorsese films, there usually seems to be a scene where some form of domestic abuse takes place, every time it happens when the main character has gone completely off the rails. Again, Casino seems to change the formula here.

In every other film where one of these scenes takes place, the man is always clearly in the wrong. Belfort is completely addicted to cocaine and cheating consistently on his wife with a variety of prostitutes, hence his wife is completely right to want a divorce. Meanwhile in Casino, Ginger is stealing from Sam, cheating on him and addicted to a whole range of substances. Sam places a lot of trust in Ginger and Ginger betrays him time and again, meanwhile in other Scorsese films the man is always the one betraying the woman. Once Ginger and Sam have their argument, we are in the unusual scenario that he, the man, is in the right.

To make sure we have at least some semblance of a Scorsese film in Casino, Nikki is the character who gets involved in most of the criminal activity. While we see Pesci play a similar level of hothead in Goodfellas, we see him through a completely different lens in Casino due to the change in narrator. From the start of this film we see Nikki as dangerous, even dangerous to himself, after he kills a man by stabbing him repeatedly in the neck with a pen. Throughout the film his relationship with Sam is a cause of great tension, as Sam disapproves of his methods and ambitions.

Scorsese’s films try to juxtapose the highs and lows of a criminal lifestyle; however, some people seem to only ever listen to the highs

All of this makes Sam one of Scorsese’s only likeable protagonists – although he is a criminal, he tends not to be as brash as those around him, or other protagonists in Scorsese films.

This is why I think Casino is less talked about than other Scorsese films, as well as why I think it gets better the more you know the genre in which it exists. The fact that the protagonist is not trying to be as outlandish as others means that he is not as talked about, Sam’s arc is more subtle than the simple ‘rise and fall’ arc of other Scorsese films. A lot of people seem to talk about The Wolf of Wall Street being a brilliant film due to how ‘cool’ Belfort’s lifestyle is, to the point where I’m convinced its 18+ age rating exists because anyone under that age won’t get what the message of the film actually is. Scorsese’s films try to juxtapose the highs and lows of a criminal lifestyle; however, some people seem to only ever listen to the highs.

In Casino, you don’t get that. Sam is scathing about the lifestyle of the people around him and his aim is to run the casino as effectively as he possibly can. There’s no grand set-piece in the film that sticks out in the way that set-pieces do in other Scorsese films, but if you watch it without expecting anything like that, you realise the genius behind the writing of it.