Casino is a film that a first saw in high school and then rewatched obsessively when I got to college. There's really no other film like it, and I think I've come to see it as Scorsese's best film. However, in recent years I think we've learned that it's just as much a Nicholas Pileggi film as a Scorsese film, with the fast narrative pacing and voiceover work being just as much his trademark as Scorsese's. The Departed, good as it was, was nothing like this! There's a moment where a low level mobster suddenly and unexpectedly does a freeze frame voiceover that is just absolutely priceless, just the essence of 90s cinema. Casino takes you to a time and place unlike any other film, including GoodFellas and even the Godfather films.
If you did want to take issue with Casino, it would be with the violence. Is Casino too violent? There are moments in the film that are so violent that they almost seem like a pie in the face to the viewer. I think I'm willing to forgive this approach, however, as being part of Scorsese's distinctive style. Child of Vietnam that he is (I think Oliver Stone could write quite a piece on Casino), I think Scorsese is using violence even here to comment on how in functions both within American society and within us all. He just doesn't let up when it comes to that.
So are the characters off-putting? Sure. But that doesn't make Casino any less a classic.
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