Entertainment
Sharon Stone’s Sexy, R-Rated Classic On Netflix Is Adult Excess Done To Perfection
By Jonathan Klotz
| Published
When people think of the best decade for crime movies, they tend to think of the 70s and The Godfather, Chinatown, Serpico, and countless other classics, but the 90s shouldn’t be overlooked. The Godfather: Part III, Reservoir Dogs, Goodfellas, are all classics, and so is Martin Scorsese’s loving tribute to Las Vegas: Casino. The 1995 crime epic has returned to Netflix in time for another generation to discover the rise and fall and rise of the greatest adult playground.
Casino Brings Las Vegas’ Sordid History To Life‘
Casino reunites Scorsese with Robert De Niro as Sam “Ace” Rothstein, based on the real Chicago mafia sports book handicapper Frank Rosenthal, who, against all odds, turned the Tangiers Casino into a money-printing success. Goodfellas standout, Joe Pesci, is also back for another round as Ace’s childhood friend turned business partner and mob enforcer, Nicky Santoro. It’s not a spoiler that the success and excess of the budding Vegas nightlife winds up turning the two lifelong friends into bitter rivals. Scorsese made a career out of the hubris of powerful men. This time, there’s a wildcard, Ginger, a former showgirl, now a con artist, played by Sharon Stone at the height of her Hollywood fame.
Adapting the book, Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas by Nicholas Pileggi means the plot moves both incredibly fast, with time jumps and skipping over major life moments, and slow, with long, languid takes of the Tangiers floor or Nicky and Ace standing around looking pensive. Covering 13 years, 1973 to 1986, there’s a lot crammed into the runtime, including a love triangle, multiple betrayals, a kidnapping, and a brief foray into local broadcast television. Casino does more in thirty minutes than most modern films, but it’s also slower and more thoughtful, a tricky balancing act that only an auteur the likes of Scorsese could effectively pull off.
They Don’t Make Them Like This Anymore
Considered either a spiritual successor to Goodfellas or an inferior attempt at recapturing the magic of the genre-defining film, Casino divided audiences upon its release. Critics thought it was a little too similar, and audiences torn between thinking it was boring or a fascinating look at the Mafia’s role in building Las Vegas. Sharon Stone won a Golden Globe for her work as Ginger and earned an Oscar nomination, yet even today, some viewers find her distracting and the worst part of the film. The Venn diagram between them and those who think Skylar is the worst part of Breaking Bad is a circle.
Anyone would look inferior to Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci doing what they do best. Casino performed well for an adult-oriented, R-rated crime epic with a $116 million box office haul that was dwarfed by the film’s success on VHS, DVD, and Blu-Ray. 30 years later, and there’s even a growing consensus that it’s better than Goodfellas. It’s not, but with its recent addition to Netflix you can at least fire it up and judge for yourself.
If you’ve never seen Casino, you’ll still find yourself recognizing camera shots and moments from the film. The Hangover recreated Ace and Nicky’s desert meeting. Then there’s the pen, a brutal moment only topped by The Dark Knight’s pencil trick. In a world with less and less adult dramas being made and Mafia movies having to step aside for streaming series, Casino is a throwback, both to how movies used to be and to how Las Vegas was long before it lost its soul by going corporate.
Casino is currently streaming on Netflix.