DING DONG WHAAAAAAM Right into the flashing faux heart of the plastic city.
I’m not a gambling man, the closest I ever got to it was when I stumbled into a small derelict ‘casino’ called Ceaser’s Palace in a small derelict town called Barry Island. My eyes were acting funny because of the drink and air had cold fangs which was impeding my vision and when I first espied the big Ceaser’s Palace sign from afar, I turned to my girlfriend and said,
“Good god, they’ve got their own one now.” I could tell by the puzzled expression on her face that she had no idea what I was referring to, so I helped her confusion with the point of a finger in that direction. “I wonder if there’s a Ceaser’s Palace in every town. Maybe this is the first one. Or perhaps this is the work of the less successful and useless twin brother to the one who opened up shop in Vegas!”
She then grabbed my arm and we fell through the gold-plated doors. Well actually it was more like stainless-steel spray-painted gold, you could tell where the paint was slowly rubbing off to the slow erosion of everyone’s hands. The warm musk of the place hit us in the face like a terrifying blizzard of emptiness. There was no one else there beside the saturnine casino employee who was wandering around disinfecting the fruit machines. I dug my hands in my pocket and pulled out what little money I had. The tiny metallic rattle inside my closed fist was the sound of £1.75 being shaken about. Enough coin to get a taste of this place… more like a whiff as the food passes you by. As people who had never tried their hands at gambling before, we surveyed the place to see which machines would be less likely to cut that hand off instantly. We ambled over to one of those machines with the small trays full of change that rock back and forth and you must use the money to put in it to push some more change out. What the fuck are those things even called? Coin pushers! Our fortunes were light on the coin pushers, those coins were too afraid to be shoved off the precipice into my pocket, so we went over to the slot machines and blew our final £1 in two goes.
What I find funny about that occasion and the reason why I’ve been babbling about it endlessly is, had the casino been nicer, bigger, with more to do and more people walking around screaming for the big win, then maybe I’d have taken some more cash out and blown it within minutes. With all my money gone, all I wanted to do now was get out of here.
Now imagine the exact opposite of the casino I was just talking about. Such is the grand scope of Casino (1995), with that comes a torrent of money flowing over the bed of an epic tale of rise and demise. I felt a powerful mood to watch a Martin Scorsese gangster film and hence I ended up watching this with my best friend as we drank copious amounts of alcohol, yet I found the film far more intoxicating than the booze. Our man in the midst of the story is Ace, played by a gentle cut-throat De Niro, who is tasked by the mafia to run a casino out in Vegas so they can intricately skim uncounted cash from the top of the money pile. Ace runs a pretty tight albeit effective and smooth ship, but all of it begins to crumble as the bosses back home send his childhood friend and violent loose cannon enforcer Nicky, an explosive performance detonated by Joe Pesci, to keep everything in line. But his insane dedication to the job and psychopathic disposition starts to cause a landslide of problems for Ace and the casino as the heat comes down not just on the job but their friendship too. This film sees Vegas through two differing eyes on the same face; one Vegas where no business is truly legit and as long as you remember that the only crime that gets punished is the one that gets caught, you’ll be fine, and then there’s the other Vegas where among the resplendent lurid artifice and the grossly atavistic attitude of the people, if you know where to hit, your crimes will go unnoticed, just how long your luck will keep the others oblivious is separate question. These two visions of Las Vegas come from the separate perspectives of Ace and Nicky which though borne from the same place of business, begin to splinter away as one begins to conflict with the other. When you witness the intricate mechanism of how the mafia are working with the casino, what measures are in place to ensure their money ends up where it’s supposed to without anyone batting an eye, makes you feel like you’re embroiled in this world past the point of backing out, you’ve seen and heard too much and now you’re running with them until the end.
You’ll be falling down a vortex of flashing colourful lights from the moment the film begins. I got sucked into this epileptic wasteland of debauchery and greed the very moment the title sequence began, which by the way is the perfect opener to such a film. I can’t stress enough how brilliant and compelling I find films that take not just their openings but title sequences seriously too. Ironically underneath all the sumptuous electric rainbows flashing out of the slot machines and the entrance of the casinos is a desolate trap which sinks its dreadful hooks into anyone who doesn’t have luck on their side – made even more soulless by the corporate takeovers at the end of the film. The casino is the perfect visual backdrop for such merciless story where money and violence make rough love. The camera also lets you know of the frenetic work that goes into keeping such an empire on its feet, crazy whip pans slashing the eyes across the screen whenever something or note happens signifies the keen eyes of the casino boss who has eyes on all, then furthermore of the eye in the sky that watches him watch all. Camerawork begins to get a bit more complicated when another layer of observation and spying is added to the mix as the FBI keep tabs on all their activity.
It doesn’t happen often that I’ll start listening to the entire soundtrack of a film in the days following my watch, I’ll normally like a song or two or recognise something that I already know, but seldom do I go after the entire soundtrack. This case is a part of those rare occasions because this soundtrack is killer. A sublime combination of traditional Italian and operatic music fuelled by the intensity of rock became an aural pacemaker of their criminal activity.
Suits, so many classy suits. I want them all. The costume design in this affair is marvellous, bright coloured suits donned by Ace are carried by his confident shoulders. Put the costume design under a bit more scrutiny and you’ll most probably find some colour theory at work delineating the status and emotions of the characters, but I don’t have time for that right now.
I’ve now tapped into the age-old argument which pits Casino against Goodfellas (1990), just which one is the more superior work? Though they have quite a lot of similarities in run-time, scope and themes, there’s a different level of maturity at work here, one that isn’t necessarily more mature, but comes from a different place, chronicling the rise and fall of the same sort of people just in different paths of life. I do recommend you put three hours aside for this film sometime and feast upon its wonder.
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