That’s like saying enough with Hitchcock on thrillers or John Ford on westerns. Tough with Scorsese on crime? I don’t think so. Casino, said the buzz, is too long (nearly three hours), too brutal (a thug with his head in a vise is squeezed until his eye rockets its socket) and too familiar (Scorsese again directing Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci as hoods. Even before Casino opened, the black cloud of letdown hung over Scorsese’s epic tale of mob infiltration of Las Vegas during the 1970s. Any hint of dissatisfaction from the fickle crowd and down you go. Martin Scorsese is the man, the most viscerally exciting director of his generation, with such classics as Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and GoodFellas to prove it. Expectations could kill Casino faster than any potshots from critics.
