A Review

Waiting for Scorsese's "Killers of the Flower Moon," I decided to watch his 1995 film "Casino" to pass tge time. And what more can I say than what a movie!

Carrying us through the convoluted and unforgiving world of the casino racket, it plays out like a funnier yet nastier version of "Goodfellas." Imagine if Henry Hill and his gang were borderline sociopaths. Sometimes I think Scorsese's greatest source of inspiration is himself. Not only does "Casino" feel influenced by his previous gangster epic, but itself seems to have served as a precursor to his more recent movies like "The Wolf of Wall Street" and "The Irishman" with its uses of narration and depiction of human tragedy.

Like any Scorsese picture, the cast is phenomenal. Robert De Niro, Sharon Stone, and Joe Pesci (dawning a really entertaining Chicago accent) are all in top form. It's also visually impactful with the Las Vegas strip backdrop feeling as alive and breathing as a coral reef. Not only is it a crime flick about the relationships of professionals bound by their misdeeds, but a drama about people bound by trust. And about how hard that trust is to build, yet so easy to break, especially in a business where everyone is working together to work for themselves.

By the end of its almost 3 hours, you fully understand how fragile the system is; a house of cards just one blow of betrayal from collapsing on itself. "Casino" is Scorsese at his most formidable, and has some of the wittiest writing to be found in any of his movies ever.