With the arrival of Killers of the Flower Moon, the topic of Martin Scorsese’s past historical dramas inevitably springs to mind. Specifically, the true crime tale that could almost be considered a Western of sorts and starred Robert De Niro, Casino. I hold a controversial opinion about Casino: I think it’s actually better than the film that preceded it, Goodfellas.
I know you’re probably saying to yourself, “Wait, that’s not true. Goodfellas came first and then Casino was just a carbon copy of that, but set in Las Vegas.” But friends, let me tell you why Casino is so much more than just “Goodfellas in the desert.”
Now, I will admit, I understand why people believe this. After all, it’s the same director, Martin Scorsese, re-teamed with the same co-screenplay writer, Nicholas Pileggi, and they’re both mobster movies starring Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci. However, those series of facts don’t lessen Casino‘s greatness.
A worthy character study
Ray Liotta and Lorraine Bracco will forever enter through the kitchen in “The Copa Shot”. One of cinema’s touchstone moments for its technical achievement in serving as the magic doorway into Henry Hill’s exclusive world. Scorsese has the couple walk in a circle to achieve depth. pic.twitter.com/d3jh4jSRDW
— Reconsidering Cinema (@coenesqued2) May 26, 2022
You see, I remember as a kid seeing the poster for Goodfellas and being disappointed that the most prominently featured actor from a visual standpoint, Robert De Niro, was more of a supporting character in the film itself when I finally got around to watching it. Rather, Ray Liotta’s Henry Hill is our main character. While the late, great Liotta gives an all-time great performance in the role, the character himself is less interesting than the protagonist in Casino, De Niro’s Sam “Ace” Rothstein.
Henry Hill is just a bit basic. His motivations amount to wanting the glamour he saw in the life of the mob, as he says in the opening line, “As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster.” He’s also not particularly intelligent or deep and often acts selfishly. Ace, on the other hand, doesn’t have the same flaw of being too dislikeable. In fact, we’re hypnotized by his tendency toward paradoxical self-destruction despite enormous skill, intellect, and talent.
The best kinds of De Niro characters we see under Scorsese, like in Taxi Driver or Raging Bull, work because of fascination with the likes of loner Travis Bickle or boxing champion Jake LaMotta having such contradictory personalities that they destroy their own lives unknowingly. Ace in Casino is the same way, only it is from the doomed romance of the film through which he makes decisions that are completely counter to his character outside of that context.
Sharon Stone gives a career-best performance
Despite being an expert gambler whose skill in the mob promotes him to running a crooked casino like a well-oiled machine in Las Vegas, the doomed nature of Ace’s friendship with Joe Pesci’s Nicky Santoro and marriage to Sharon Stone’s Ginger McKenna slide right past his blind spot. It’s tragically obvious to us as an audience that both the friendship and marriage would’ve ended in torment almost from the outset. And yet, it makes for an interesting character study for us to watch someone who isn’t aware of that same insight.
Henry from Goodfellas just comes across as shallow compared to Ace. But even when you look around at other aspects of the film, Casino keeps scoring points in my head-to-head tally. Take Stone’s Oscar-nominated role as Ginger. She absolutely deserves recognition for her performance anchoring the dramatic tension of the movie as much if not more than De Niro himself. We see the tragedy of her own story as a woman controlled by both her substance abuse and her former pimp, James Woods’ Lester Diamond. On top of all of that, Ginger married a man, Ace, whom she blatantly told up front she did not love, leading to a life devoid of true affection for them both.
I love Goodfellas, applaud Lorraine Bracco’s brave performance as Karen Hill, Henry’s wife, and I will always praise the film for that classic moment when the voice-over narration changes to Karen’s point of view, with a female perspective in the narrative being a rarity for Scorsese. However, Stone’s gutwrenching and physical performance of a drug addict slowly killing herself will always be seared in my mind as the most memorable.
Impeccable and unforgettable
I will admit, Joe Pesci’s Tommy DeVito from Goodfellas is quite similar to the Nicky character in Casino. You could almost say it is a spiritual sequel of a role. However, there isn’t necessarily anything wrong with watching that for sheer entertainment value. Do the similarities between Pesci’s roles mean that Goodfellas is more original than Casino? Absolutely. But is it any less entertaining to watch Pesci chew the scenery as a hot-headed mobster with a penchant for psychopathic-level violence in Casino? Not one bit, I could watch six more hours of this.
I also prefer the cinematography and iconography in Casino over Goodfellas. True, the Copacabana one shot in Goodfellas is a legendary piece of cinema that is one of the best examples of watching characters get immersed in the seedy underworld. But on the other hand, I admire the concision of ideas in the close-up of Ace’s face in Casino as Nicky’s car drives through the desert, lifting up a veil of sand reflected in his sunglasses. Plus the unique way in which Scorsese and cinematographer Robert Richardson achieved that glowing effect from light sources during night scenes in Casino, as they did in another collaboration, Bringing Out the Dead, will always stand out to me as memorable.
All in all, both Goodfellas and Casino are excellent films. But personally, I think Casino deserves recognition outside the shadow that Goodfellas has cast as its predecessor. In many important ways, Casino achieves more of what Goodfellas initially set out to do, like something perfected from a prototype.