Casino

In the evening, for the third time of asking I finished the three hour Martin Scorsese film Casino. I found the subject boring and the approach of Scorsese distinctly amoral in what appears to be is lifelong devotion and adoration of the homicidal gangster. So here are the bare bones of the story. The film is set in Los Vegas when the Casino’s were owned by gangsters with managers placed to front the enterprises and a team of people to ensure as much money was taken and then filtered to the mobs outside the required booking keeping and taxation requirements of the law. Everyone involved was on the take one way or the other and as were the large number of professional gambler, tricksters and fraudsters who attempted to take the money leaving only the American people and overseas visitors, the mugsters, to spend, spend, and more than they can afford to lose.

There are three outstanding actors in the film. Sharon Stone plays a drug and drinking tart who sleeps with anyone who will keep her in the lifestyle to which she has become accustomed. Robert De Niro is sent by the New York Mob to be the unofficial boss of a Casino where he puts his years of skilled gambling to use in spotting those who attempt to beat the system, albeit a crooked one. His misfortune is to want Sharon Stone to be his wife and mother of his children, Unsurprisingly give her attractive body and calculated sexual skills De Nero wants her to love him and as an inducement trusts her with the keys and rights to a security bank box contained two million dollars and a similar value of jewels. He realises she is just a greedy drug and drunk who ties up their one only child when the baby sitter does not turn up and she wants to go out whoring with his best friend of thirty five years he tries to throw her out but she manages to get hold of the money which she then blows on low life scum and ends up dead from an over dose at the hands of one of them.

This brings us to scum of scum played by Joe Pesci, A ruthless gangster who enjoys torturing and killing anyone who comes in is way or required by his gang bosses. He is sent out to Vegas to watch the back of De Niro who is turning in such great profits that Pesci is able to mount his own local operation and still hand over more that the mobsters had received before the De Nero stewardship.

Then all goes wrong and the FBI begin to move in and mobsters get scared. One early victim is Pesci and his brother who are savagely beaten before beating buried alive in the desert. De Nero survives a car bomb because of ant bomb protection beneath the drivers seat. Wonder why the troops out in Iraq and Afghanistan did not get the same protection until recently! De Neo goes off somewhere and returns to his former gambling prowess to rebuild his life and wealth. Meanwhile the international corporations move to Vegas and demolish the told style Casino‘s and create new family holiday centres to ensure that the USA public and international visitors spend an even greater proportion of their new wealth in the 90’s and early millennium before it all came crashing down. Meanwhile the Party Politicians continue to try and fix their game.