Brad's "Casino" review

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS!


From the very beginning of the film, we see the underlying problem: money. In a shot that is beautiful enough to make a grown man drool, two guys stand at a table counting stacks of bills whose denomination is so large that I have never even held one. Meanwhile a machine is counting change and packaging it into rolls. Truly, money is the root of most, if not all, of the evil in this film.

The most obvious example of this is Ginger (played by a magnificent Sharon Stone). In fact, she goes as far as marrying the main character, Ace (Robert de Niro), and has a child with him not because of his promise to love her forever, but his promise to financially take care of her forever. And, believe me, she reminds him of that promise frequently throughout the movie. Admittedly, in the voice-over, Ace admits that he made a mistake by trusting her completely, and I think he's right. But if he is at fault for trusting, its only because he trusted in human nature a bit too much, maybe placed a little too much trust in optimism too, and he almost gets killed for it.

Ace has more than one problem though. He has to report to mob bosses that are thousands of miles away (who are always expecting a cut), and when his relationship with Ginger turns sour, we see the exposure of man's other great weakness: women. Ginger, through her usage of herself, plants the seeds into the mind of Ace's best friend Nicky (Joe Pesci) to kill Ace. Needless to say that the movie has a violent end for both Nicky and Ace.

I thought this movie was very fascinating for several reasons. On a surface level, it is a mobster movie of sorts that gives you a behind-the-scenes look at how a casino is run. But, on a grander scale, we get to see in three hours a man who gets paradise, and has the three things that always lead to a man's downfall: money, desire and trust. In the end, those three things spell disaster for most of the characters in the film.

posted by Brad @ 6:47 PM