Also involved in the story is Rosenthal’s wife Ginger (Sharon Stone, “The Disaster Artist”) and Ginger’s ex-boyfriend Lester (James Woods, “Videodrome”).Īlright, lets get my biggest qualms out of the way first: pacing and length. Both men played pivotal rolls in running the Las Vegas casinos for the Chicago mob during the 70s and 80s. “Casino” tells the true story of Lefty Rosenthal and Tony Spilotro, in the film, their names are changed to Ace Rosenstein (Robert De Niro, “Brazil”) and Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci, forthcoming “The Irishman”). This film is good, but it’s just so long, and a lot of the film is just standing around in casinos and waiting for things to happen.
If I’m going to sit down to rewatch an epic Scorsese film, personally, would much rather sit down to watch “The Aviator”, “The Departed”, or even another one of Scorsese’s lesser films, “Gangs of New York”. However, while this film is well made, it is also three hours long, and it isn’t nearly as compelling or event-filled as some of Scorsese’s other crazy biopics like “Goodfellas” or “The Wolf of Wall Street”, and that right there makes it difficult for me to champion this film today ahead of Scorsese’s other works. “Casino” is a very well made movie, and for the most part it’s pretty entertaining.
