Tagarchief: Martin Scorsese

Casino (1995)

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld


‘No one stays at the top forever’

Directed by:
Martin Scorsese

Written by:
Nicholas Pileggi (book and screenplay)
Martin Scorsese (screenplay)

Cast:
Robert De Niro (Sam ‘Ace’ Rothstein), Sharon Stone (Ginger McKenna), Joe Pesci (Nicky Santoro), James Woods (Lester Diamond), Frank Vincent (Frank Marino), Pasquale Cajano (Remo Gaggi), Kevin Pollak (Phillip Green), Don Rickles (Billy Sherbert), Vinny Vella (Artie Piscano), Alan King (Andy Stone)

With Casino, director Martin Scorsese has made another powerful statement about the gangster lifestyle, but like its setting Las Vegas, it is way flashier than its New York based predecessor GoodFellas. Scorsese regular Robert De Niro portrays Sam ‘Ace’ Rothstein, an overly serious professional gambler, who is sent to Las Vegas by the Midwest Mafia to run the Tangiers Casino. This task is handled superbly by control freak Rothstein (“an equal amount of blueberries in each muffin”), but as Rothstein’s protector, gangster Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci) explains in voice-over: “In the end, we fucked it all up”.

It is easy to see why Scorsese wanted to tell this real-life story, written by Nicholas Pileggi (who also wrote the book Wiseguy on which GoodFellas is based). There is some real poetry in this tale of greed and power. Rothstein, who plays every bet as safe as possible, takes a real chance by marrying the unstable hustler Ginger (Sharon Stone). He also miraculously survives an attempt on his life by an amazing coincidence. Two very interesting occurrences for a man who doesn’t believe in luck.

Visually, Scorsese takes Casino further than any of his previous movies. There are loads of terrific shots and camera moves. The fifty million dollar budget is well spent on beautiful seventies Vegas settings and to portray Rothstein’s and Ginger’s flamboyant lifestyle. The greed of this desert city is also visualised in what must be the largest amount of dollar shots in cinema history.

Pesci delivers a chilling performance as a psychopathic mobster. His Nicky Santoro is less of a loose cannon than his Tommy De Vito from GoodFellas, but he’s possibly even scarier and more violent. No surprise then, that Santoro is the biggest contributor to the extremely harsh violence Casino portrays. The infamous vice and baseball bat scenes are very unpleasant to look at, but many of the other killings are repellent and nasty as well.

Stone’s Ginger brings some balance to the business oriented and almost documentary-style story of the Mafia’s Las Vegas. Although some scenes of her drug problems and failing marriage with Rothstein feel repetitious, they are never dull. Stone, like De Niro, delivers a flawless performance. Some minor flaws don’t detract from Casino’s status as an absolute gangster classic.

Rating:

Quote:
NICKY SANTORO: “You called my friends a faggot? You told him to go fuck himself? Is that what you did? You told him to go fuck himself? You fuckin’ hick! You fuckin’ hick you! Come here!”

Trivia:
Among other Las Vegas regulars, veteran comedy headliners Alan King, Don Rickles, and Dick Smothers appear in major, non-comedic roles.

Cannonball!

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

Director: Paul Bartel
Written by: Paul Bartel, Don Simpson
Cast: David Carradine, Bill McKinney, Veronica Hamel, Gerrit Graham

Year / Country: 1976, USA
Running Time: 94 mins.

Your liking of Cannonball! aka Carquake will mainly depend on how you generally appreciate B-movies about car-racing. I personally like them a lot. Cool-ass heroes in slick cars; pretty girls; highway chase scenes; crashes; mayhem: the works. This movie is based on real illegal cross-continental road races that took place around the time this movie was made.

The seventies was a fruitful era for this type of film. In 1976, the year this movie came out, The Gumball Rally, was also released about the same topic. A year earlier, its director Paul Bartel had considerable B-movie success with the very similar film Death Race 2000 which also had David Carradine in the lead role and covered a road race through America. This is not exactly a sequel though. It’s no sci-fi for one thing and unlike Death Race 2000, it has not been produced by Roger Corman, but by Run Run Shaw (one of the Shaw Brothers). Corman does have a small cameo. So do Martin Scorsese, Joe Dante and Sylvester Stallone. The movie was written by Bartel and Don Simpson. That’s right, the now deceased Don Simpson who formed a team with Jerry Bruckheimer and made one Hollywood smash hit after another. This is the first film on his resume.

David Carradine plays Coy ‘Cannonball’ Buckman, a former convict who participates in the Trans-America Grand Prix, an illegal annual race from L.A. to New York City. The prize money for winning is 100.000 dollars, so most of the participants play any dirty trick in the book to rid themselves of the competition. The police also finds out about the race and plans to arrest all the participants. Buckman has to overcome many obstacles to reach the finish line, such as car damage, malicious competitors and hand-to-hand combat. The latter of course is no problem for David ‘Kung Fu’ Carradine, but the driving proves to be a bigger challenge. Buckman is no Frankenstein (Carradine’s character in Death Race 2000), who had a mechanical hand to shift his gears faster and who was designed to win. Buckman is not that mythological. At least it looks that way initially…

Director Bartel usually offers more satire in his films, but Cannonball! doesn’t seem to have any pretensions except to offer simple entertainment. The campy fun consists mostly of the drivers competing with each other through racing moves and fist fights. Unfortunately the lack of real excitement makes it look like a cheap cash-in on its predecessors.

Because besides its subversive character, Death Race 2000 had intriguing characters and many outrageous action scenes and dialogues. It appeared to have been made with great enthusiasm and care to provide the audience with as much entertainment as possible. And it worked. Cannonball! doesn’t really try to excel in anything. Not in the acting, the writing or the directing.

Even Carradine, an actor I normally love (to me he is the ultimate B-movie star) seems a bit out of his depth here. Some good stunts and a final scene of appropriate demolition save this from being a complete failure, but there is little to recommend it for. A shame really because all those involved did a lot of good work elsewhere. Oh well, if you’re up for a no-brainer, this flick may suit you well. Otherwise Death Race 2000 is the far better alternative.

Rating:

Biography: Paul Bartel (1938, New York – 2000, New York) majored in theater arts at UCLA and studied film directing in Rome. After getting his first work experience with Roger Corman he directed a number of low budget cult films. He also worked as a writer and an actor. He died in 2000 from a heart attack.

Filmography: The Secret Cinema (1968, short), Naughty Nurse (1969, short), Private Parts (1972), Death Race 2000 (1975), Cannonball! (1976), Eating Raoul (1982), Not for Publication (1984), Lust in the Dust (1985), The Longshot (1986), Amazing Stories (1986/87, TV episodes), Shelf Life (1993), The Comic Strip Presents…(1993, TV episode), Clueless (1996, TV episode)