- The movie Casino was a 1995 release directed by Martin Scorsese. It starred Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Sharon Stone. The plot was inspired by the real-life story of Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal who.
- At one time or another, 'Casino Royale' undoubtedly had a shooting schedule, a script and a plot. If any one of the three ever turns up, it might be the making of a good movie. In the meantime, the present version is a definitive example of what can happen when everybody working on a film goes simultaneously berserk.
Martin Scorsese's fascinating new film 'Casino' knows a lot about the Mafia's relationship with Las Vegas. It's based on a book by Nicholas Pileggi, who had full access to a man who once ran four casinos for the mob, and whose true story inspires the movie's plot. Like ' The Godfather,' it makes us feel like eavesdroppers in a secret place. This Martin Scorsese film depicts the Janus-like quality of Las Vegas-it has a glittering, glamorous face, as well as a brutal, cruel one. Ace Rothstein and Nicky Santoro, mobsters who move to Las Vegas to make their mark, live and work in this paradoxical world.
Martin Scorsese's fascinating new film 'Casino' knows a lot about the Mafia's relationship with Las Vegas. It's based on a book by Nicholas Pileggi, who had full access to a man who once ran four casinos for the mob, and whose true story inspires the movie's plot.
Like 'The Godfather,' it makes us feel like eavesdroppers in a secret place.
The movie opens with a car bombing, and the figure of Sam 'Ace' Rothstein floating through the air. The movie explains how such a thing came to happen to him. The first hour plays like a documentary; there's a narration, by Rothstein (Robert De Niro) and others, explaining how the mob skimmed millions out of the casinos.
It's an interesting process. Assuming you could steal 25 percent of the slot-machine take - what would you do with tons of coins? How would you convert them into bills that could be stuffed into the weekly suitcase for delivery to the mob in Kansas City? 'Casino' knows. It also knows how to skim from the other games, and from food service and the gift shops. And it knows about how casinos don't like to be stolen from.
There's an incident where a man is cheating at blackjack, and a couple of security guys sidle up to him and jab him with a stun gun.
He collapses, the security guys call for medical attention, and hurry him away to a little room where they pound on his fingers with a mallet and he agrees that he made a very bad mistake.
Rothstein, based on the real-life figure of Frank (Lefty) Rosenthal, starts life as a sports oddsmaker in Chicago, attracts the attention of the mob because of his genius with numbers and is assigned to run casinos because he looks like an efficient businessman who will encourage the Vegas goose to continue laying its golden eggs. He is a man who detests unnecessary trouble. One day, however, trouble finds him, in the person of Ginger McKenna (Sharon Stone), a high-priced call girl.
This is possibly the most indulgent film ever made. Anything goes. Consistency and planning must have seemed the merest whimsy. One imagines the directors (there were five, all working independently) waking in the morning and wondering what they'd shoot today. How could they lose? They had bundles of money, because this film was blessed with the magic name of James Bond.
Perhaps that was the problem. When Charles Feldman bought the screen rights for 'Casino Royale' from Ian Fleming back in 1953, nobody had heard of James Bond, or Sean Connery for that matter. But by the time Feldman got around to making the movie, Connery was firmly fixed in the public imagination as the redoubtable 007. What to do?
Feldman apparently decided to throw all sanity overboard instead of one Bond, he determined to have five or six. The senior Bond is Sir James Bond (David Niven). He is called out of retirement to meet a terrible threat by SMERSH.
Unfortunately, the threat is never explained. Other Bonds are created on the spot. Peter Sellers is the baccarat-playing Bond. He meets Le Chiffre (Orson Welles) in a baccarat game. Why? The movie doesn't say.
The five directors were given instructions given only for their own segments, according to the publicity, and none knew what the other four were doing. This is painfully apparent.
There are some nice touches, of course. Woody Allen rarely fails to be funny, and the massive presence of Welles makes one wish Le Chiffre had been handled seriously.
But the good things are lost, too often, in the frantic scurrying back and forth before the cameras. The steady hand of Terence Young, who made the original Bond films credible despite their gimmicks, is notably lacking here.
I suppose a film this chaotic was inevitable. There has been a blight of these unorganized comedies, usually featuring Sellers, Allen, and-or Jonathan Winters, in which the idea is to prove how zany and clever everyone is when he throws away the script and goes nuts in front of the camera.
In comedy, however, understatement is almost always better than excess.
Casino Film Vf Gratuit
Sellers was the funniest comedian in the movies when he was making those lightly directed low-budget pictures like 'I'm All Right, Jack.' Now he is simply self-infatuated and wearisome. And so are the movies he graces.
Casino Film Vf Gratuit
One wishes Charlie Feldman had sat down one bright morning, early in the history of this film, and announced that everyone simply had top get organized.
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