Casino

The most honest moment in Goodfellas was when Ray Liotta said the mafia was just protection for people who couldn't go to the cops. That piece of dialogue came at the beginning of the movie. The most honest line in Casino is at the end when Robert De Niro describes the transition of Las Vegas from mob controlled to corporatized and ready for the average American. The rest of the film, like Goodfellas, is a grandoise rendering of a rise and fall of a criminal. The film is based on facts but the stoy has as much honesty and depth as any old gangster flick. Scorsese commits himself to the old Hollywood vehicle. The good news is that this commitment brings better results with filmmaking than it did in Goodfellas. Scorsese puts on a stylistic show with his camera and allows actor narration to perfectly match with camera movements and literally pan through five scenes in less than a minute and give more action and information in that one minute than most other Hollywood films would in ten minutes. Scorsese's talent has never been questioned and is proved here. He does some amazing virtuostic acts with the filmmaking in Casino. It's a shame the subject is the mafia and it barely reminds us of his early days when characterization meant a lot more to him for this subject.