Casino on PAL Laserdisc

• Cat. No: PLFEC 35471
• Cert: 18
• Running time: 174 minutes
• Year: 1995
• Pressing: UK, 1997
• Sides: 3 (CLV)
• Chaptered: YES
• Sound: Dolby Surround
• Widescreen: 2.35:1
• Price: £34.99

Director:

Martin Scorsese

Starring:

Robert De Niro
Joe Pesci
Sharon Stone
James Woods

Often (unfairly) dismissed as a rehash of their earlier collaboration Goodfellas, Scorsese and writer Nicholas Pileggi’s tale of a professional gambler running a casino, a vicious gangster spiralling ever more out of control and a woman dragging the pair of them into the abyss is nothing if not epic.

From its opening De Niro car-bombing frame story (paid off in the script’s closing minutes) through (Pesci’s voice over about) lots of Las Vegas problems being solved out in the desert, one gets a real sense of vastness of scale, much heightened by Dante Ferretti’s incredible production design throughout – tabling and slot machine interiors that seem to stretch into infinity, night shots flush with the garish neon signs that could be nowhere else but Vegas and a terrifying denouement in which holes start appearing in the desert followed by bodies to fill them.

This epic sense is carried through in the three main characters/performances. Sam ‘Ace’ Rothstein (De Niro), possessed of gambling instincts second to none, is chosen by the mob to front a huge Las Vegas casino. All that the bosses want is for their continued skimming of cash off the top to keep flowing into their pockets. All Sam wants is to run a smooth operation.

Ultimately, what prevents him doing so is boyhood pal Nicky Santoro (Pesci), a hot tempered Made Guy similar to the same actor’s character in Goodfellas, who typically settles a dispute by plunging a man’s pen into his neck and kicking him repeatedly while he’s down. Unlike Sam, Nicky has no sense of tact.

Robert Richardson’s lighting
does justice
like never before
to the superficial Vegas glitz

Sam, meanwhile, has problems of his own in terms of a local politician’s relative he fired for incompetence – suddenly all the Nevada authorities want him closed down and he can’t even get a fair trial hearing on his pending casino manager application. He has problems on the family front, too, having married former hooker Ginger McKenna (Stone) who starts out a real businessman’s asset but runs around with her ex-pimp boyfriend Lester Diamond (Woods).

This is never a film to pull its punches. Like Goodfellas, it has a terrific pop music soundtrack from the period (1973 onwards). The three leads are all on top form, though one might wish for more screen time for the excellent Stone (her finest performance to date) and, even more so, for the marginalised Woods. Then there are the eruptions of violence – a roulette wheel cheat taken to a back room to have his finger smashed with a hammer, an interrogation squeezing someone’s head in a vice for the required information and, finally, all those freshly dug holes in the desert and their terrible consequences.

This Pioneer disc, presented in the original 2.35:1 ratio (which the movie employs constantly – why would anyone in their right mind want to see the full screen version out on rental video?) may be destined to go down as a technical benchmark. Robert Richardson’s lighting does justice like never before to the superficial Vegas glitz, with the night time Neon-soaked exteriors among some of the finest images on PAL disc this reviewer has seen. But everything else – whether you’re talking about a violent set piece or something as seemingly trivial as De Niro hilariously standing up behind his desk to reveal he’s not wearing any trousers – looks magnificent.

The richly orchestrated detail of the extensive and meticulous production design lend the whole affair and the characters occupying the space within it the air of a contemporary dynasty. As a bonus, the incredible opening title sequence by Saul and Elaine Bass captures all this as a car-bomb victim’s silhouette blasts through the neons, lights and shiny surfaces that denote Vegas.