This isn’t a review. This is a write-up of my experience of revisiting, after a few years, the 1995 film Casino. Contrary to its title, Casino is not one of those gambling movies. It’s a follow up to Martin Scorsese’s mafia mob drama Goodfellas.
“When you love someone, you gotta trust them. There’s no
other way. You gotta give them the key to everything that’s yours. Otherwise,
what’s the point? And for a while, I believe that’s the kind of love I had” says
Sam ‘Ace’ Rothstein as he walks out with a cigar in his mouth and into a car
that blows up. What does one make of that? Scorsese’s films rarely begin with
the beginning. You’re given a glimpse of (mostly) some part of the middle. Just
like how Kubrick began Lolita with its ending. By showing us where the story climaxes,
our minds aren’t perched on the fate of the characters but instead on their
functioning.
Sam ‘Ace’ Rothstein (Robert Deniro) heads a Casino in Las
Vegas. He might be working under the title of ‘Casino Executive’ in a Casino
owned by Philip Green, who exists as the squeaky clean front man under the
orders of the elders of a mafia family, but Sam was the boss. The first time
the camera pans into his magnificent Casino, you see it brightly lit and
adorned with slot machines lined up against each other. Sam explains about the
business, “We’re the only winners. The players don’t stand a chance.”
