Rating: 
Summary: AMAZED, BUT DISGUSTED
Review: I THOUGHT THIS MOVIE WAS A GREAT MOVIE OVERALL, BECAUSE OF THE CAST AND THE ACTING. I LOVED THE WHOLE MOB SETTING AND HOW IF YOU TALK BEHIND OTHER PEOPLES BACK YOU'LL BE IN HOT WATER. SHARON STONE WAS GREAT WITH HER DEEP CHARACTER AS A HUSTLER. PESCI WAS GREAT AND SO WAS DENIRO. BUT THE VIOLENCE WAS GROSS AND MADE ME ALMOST PUKE. SCCORSCE WAS VERY--TOO REALISTIC. EYES POPPING OUT, BULLETS THROUGH THE HEAD, AND PEOPLE BEING CRUSHED FROM A VICE MACHINE? THEN OF COURSE PESCI AND DE NIRO BEING BRUTALLY BEATEN WITH BATS 100'S OF TIMES THEN BURIED IN A HOLE ALIVE! WHAT NEXT? A CHAINSAW?
Rating: 
Summary: If not for an all-star cast, wouldn't be nearly as good.
Review: I am a lifelong diehard Deniro fan as well as a diehard Pesci fan. After a look at the cast of Casino, you might be thinking of it as a sequel to Scorsese's earlier film, Goodfellas. I felt that in many ways, Scorsese attempted to do everything in Casino that he did not do in Goodfellas. The result? A good movie, but nowhere near deserving the ammount of acclaim that Goodfellas received. For one thing, Casino drags much more than Goodfellas. Casino is two tapes of wiseguy action, yet gets very repetitive. The film examines the inner workings of a Las Vegas casino run by Deniro who plays a very good role as a cardshark and expert gambler. From this description, it is hard to find any weak spots. Perhaps if Scorsese had trimmed some of Casino I would have rated it a firm 5 stars. One breath of fresh air is Sharon Stone's great performance as Ginger, a cardshark herself not to mention a temptress. Bottom line, if you are a fan of Deniro, Pesci or just the Mob, this film is worth seeing.
Rating: 
Summary: Over the top glitzy Mafia-in-Vegas movie
Review: The main detractor here was the violence. I don't mind violence in movies at all, and I really don't mind gore here and there when necessary, but this movie goes all out to almost B-movie type of violence. I mean you better not be eating when you watch this, or whatever you're eating is probably going to come up. A guy gets stabbed to death with an ink pen, of all things - as if they ran out of ways to kill people with various sharp objects that will produce as much blood as possible, so they decided to use a PEN. A lady gets shot through the side of the head, and you're left seeing blood squirt from the wound as she crumples to the floor. Pesci and a couple dudes torture a guy by crushing his head in a vice; his eye pops, blood squirts up out of his mouth or something - which is probably one of the worst. There's dozens of others too and I don't have time to get into all of them, but the movie is capped off with Pesci and his friend being beaten to death with metal ball bats. Casino left me wondering, among other things, how this team will kill people in the next one! The best thing about it was, when people weren't being brutally killed, the acting. DeNiro, Pesci, and Rickles are all stellar. Pesci is totally hilarious as his usual loose-cannon Mafia character. There's a scene in a bar/restaurant where he tells a guy off for not paying his bills that's the funniest thing I've ever seen. The biggest surprise, though, was Rickles. Don needs to be in more serious parts like this, because he can act! It's classic Scorsese as well - complete with every falling apart in the end. There seems to be less attention to the "period" than in Goodfellas and more of an emphasis on glamour and glitzy sets pieces. Goodfellas had '50's, '60's, and '70's virtually embossed right on the screen through style, music, cars, etc. Casino skips right over those things and opens, oddly, in documentary style (not just, "I always wanted to be a gangster...") and continues that way for about 50 minutes. Casino is certainly not a movie you want to avoid, it's very worth watching, but don't expect it to be the experience that Goodfellas was.
Rating: 
Summary: Don Rickles at his best!
Review: Who said Don Rickles can't act in serious roles? HA! Donnie my boy puts on a great show. Anything with Don Rickles in it is a award winner!
Rating:
Summary: Good movie, DVD doesn't play, unfortunately
Review: Good movie. Unfortunately, my Toshiba 2050 does not play the DVD (doesn't load). I tried three of them and no luck.
Rating:
Summary: One of Scorsese's best
Review: People complain Casino resembles Goodfellas too much. Well, how could it not? The same major players are in this film, but it's a movie all it's own. Only Sharon Stone really lets things down. Rumor has it, that Madonna was supposed to be the one staring as Ginger, and I think even she would have done a better job. But overall, that is a minor complaint. DeNiro is classic at playing the brains of the operation, and Pesci plays the psychotic braun perfectly, maybe a little too perfectly. The minor players in the film put on great perfomances as well. The only other complaint I have is the running time. At 3 hours long, it is overly long by about 45 minutes. But the lulls are more than made up for by the highs. I'm sure it's been said before, but viewers with weaks stomachs will want to stear clear of this one, or at least divert their eyes from the screen during about 5 scenes. Casino is entertaining AND educational at the same time. For people who want to see how Las Vegas was ran in the 70's, or fans of those involved, this is a must.
Rating:
Summary: Great mobster movie dealing with Las Vegas
Review: If you love the mafia and you love the mafia's presence in Las Vegas, then check this three hour movie out. The acting by DeNiro and Pesci are second to none in this movie. Incredible opening and closing of the movie about how Vegas is now compared to when it began.
Rating:
Summary: A tale of two tapes.....
Review: When I rented it it came on two VHS tapes. The first half of the movie was great as the story and characters develop. Then the second half denigrates into a bloodbath of butcher scenes. Totally uncalled for and after over three hours it was tiresome as well. Not nearly as good as "Goodfellas" which was shorter, moved smoothly and much less graphically violent and bloody.
Rating:
Summary: The comptroller's guided tour of hell
Review: Appropriating what Gertrude Stein once said about Oakland, in Las Vegas there is no there THERE. No port for import and export commerce, no town square or neighborhoods that naturally evolved. It is a completely manufactured place and "Casino" illustrates how and why it continued to evolve as it was originally devised in the last 30 odd years. "Casino" is a gigantic, downright operatic portrait of Vegas and will not be as appreciated on video or DVD as it is on the big screen. Shot in Super 35mm, it's a huge, in-your-face canvas of the inner workings of the casinos in Vegas when they were subsidized by Teamster money. An era long gone when the dealers knew your name, what you drank and what your games were. Similar to how "GoodFellas" was a guided tour of how one becomes a member of the mob, "Casino" is a guided tour of the hell of Vegas where you're shown a world of gesture and nuance, allegiance and hegemony, protocol and etiquette that has been swept away by time, Mafia negligence and corporate money, and describes in painstaking detail just how the casinos operated, and how money, LOTS of money, was "skimmed" off the top and laundered in a mom and pop store in Kansas City on a weekly basis. This is not simply a story of greed and debauchery, but the comptrollers guided tour of hell. The character of Sam "Ace" Rothstein (Robert De Niro, looking like Lyle Lovett after a bad gig) goes to elaborate lengths in order to let the viewer know how much a casino owner, any casino owner, must be hypersensitive to EVERY SINGLE DETAIL that occurs in his building, because people are constantly using whatever ingenious methods they can to try and break the bank, especially since the raison d'être of a casino is not to let someone win, but to simply keep them playing. This is also Scorsese's public service warning to the middle class who have developed quite a fawning relationship with the place since the mob moved out in the early 80s and the corporations stepped in. Although the narrative techniques are very similar to GoodFellas, and, yes, it could be considered "GoodFellas Goes To Vegas," the protagonist's character of Ray Liotta in that film (who really was able to practically glamorize the mob) is nowhere to be found in Casino. In fact, there is no single protagonist at all in this film, just the counterpoint of Ace and Nicky (Joe Pesci) and the friendship and feuds they are drawn into because of the nature of their respective businesses. (In fact, towards the end of the film a third voice-over is introduced and utilized in a very key scene in order to underline the fact that at any given time only one person can hold ALL the cards.) The narrative voice-over is shared by both Ace and Nicky, and the movie seems like it's been playing for about a full hour until you start to realize the voice-over isn't there any more. Not only is a ton of information being thrown at the viewer in order to echo the relentless amount of details the casino owner had to keep track of, but it underlines the narrative distance, therefore creating a spiritual railing. In the very first scene, Ace says, "we had it all, and we f***** it up BIG TIME." And the whole rest of the film is almost like a beautiful parabolic arc spanning the destruction from within of the Tangiers hotel. Sharon Stone as Ginger gets her chance to be a stunning screen presence for only about half an hour before she has to really act, and when she does, she proves that she really can act. Playing off De Niro there's no way of slacking, and her portrayal as De Niro's jewel, then wife, then grossly negligent mother is excellent. She should get an acting nomination for her portrayal and will most likely win as well. (See the sidebar article Heaven or Las Vegas? for a more fully realized discussion of her role.) The use of the soundtrack in Casino is practically a textbook case of how to use it effectively to introduce and define characters. A cross between KIXI's greatest hits (to remind you that you're in Vegas) and old blues standards (to ground you in the "back home" scenes in Chicago), the film uses songs to outline the story much like George Lucas used songs to advance the narrative in his 1973 film American Graffiti. Since Scorsese doesn't use a composer for his films, his knowledge of the jukebox must be (and obviously is) encyclopedic. One of the finest touches in the film is the way he dog-ears the Rolling Stones with Lefty's character as a parallel with the "new," imported blues edging it's way into the indigenous blues era the film initially identifies the genre with. Out of DOZENS of songs on the soundtrack, the only song Scorsese uses in its entirety is the Stones song "Can't You Hear Me Knockin'?" When the opening riff is heard, Joe Pesci's character has just been 86ed from all the Casino's in Vegas. He has his name in the little black book next to Al Capone's. Over the course of the next seven minutes of the song (Can't you hear me knockin' trying to get back into Vegas?) Scorsese shows how Nicky gradually was able to reinstate his stature and not only get back into Vegas on his own terms, but to supersede his buddy Ace. It's an absolutely stunning sequence that is perfectly timed and edited with the rhythms of the song.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent, if not a little bit too violent, mob movie
Review: Once again, Martin Scorsese pairs up with the dynamic duo of mob movies: Deniro and Pesci, and once again they've create an amazing, epic movie. Unfortunately, I must say that this movie isn't quite as good as goodfellas, but is very close. It has superb directing, great cast(who beats Deniro and Pesci?), and a wonderful story about the rise and fall of a mafia owned casino. As great as this movie is, i must say something about the violence. This is by far the most violent movie I have ever seen. Before i saw this one, I thought that Goodfellas was as violent as things can get, and then Natural born killers. But this movie gets the cake when it comes to disturbing violence. This isn't an unnecissarily violent movie however, but rather a realisticly violent one. It depicts some of the terrible things that really happened to people in the mafia, and Martin Scorsese isn't afraid to show it all. I personally don't believe that this movie should be seen by anyone under 15, and only to the most MATURE 15 year olds. As a highschooler myself who has been desensitized by violence, I found it very hard to sit through the end baseball bat scene, and when it was over, that part in particular left sort of a bad taste in my mouth and kept me up at night. However, the violence will detract from the movie only if you are faint at heart or not use to such gruesome scenes. First, see goodfellas. Then see Casino.
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