Sunday, October 18, 2020

On re-watching Casino

A couple of months ago I posted about re-watching Goodfellas for the first time since I saw it at the cinema, and finding it more enjoyable than I remembered.

Well, I've now done the same thing with Casino, and once again I can say that virtually nothing of what happened in the movie had stuck in my mind - I could not even get a even a snippet of memory for this one.  

And on re-watching it, I can see why.   It's a flashy movie in search of a story, really.  Unlike Goodfellas, which is all about how someone grows up and tries to make his way in the mobster life, this one starts with the characters already corrupt and sleazy, and the main thing that goes wrong is the de Niro character picking a bad wife.    Sure, Sharon Stone is really good, and there is plenty of music of the era (even more so than in Goodfellas, I suspect), but in retrospect there is so little to it, story wise.   I don't remember being particularly disappointed in it after seeing it in the cinema, so in this case, I think it is worse than how I "remembered" it.

My overall lukewarm assessment of Scorsese feels very justified by this experience.

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