However, what is most striking about Casino is not how it compares to Goodfellas, but how it contrasts. It is bold and ambitious, epic and sweeping. Although the film undoubtedly still exists in the shadow of Goodfellas, it has come to be recognised as one of the great crime films and to merit some appreciation on its own terms. Peter Travers summarised the mood, “Even before Casino opened, the black cloud of letdown hung over Scorsese’s epic tale.” These complaints circulated even before Casino hit cinemas. There were also rumblings of the movie’s brutality and violence, which was seen as being particularly excessive and graphic.

That is a lot of mobster movie, particularly if that movie felt in anyway derivative of the appreciably shorter Goodfellas. These problems were compounded by content. At time of release, Casino was Scorsese’s longest movie, clocking in at just shy of three hours. There were legitimate concerns that Scorsese was simply repeating himself, and that any comparisons to Goodfellas did not flatter Casino. Part of this backlash was motivated by the film’s perceived similarities to Goodfellas – Scorsese had made another soundtrack-heavy period-piece mob movie starring both Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci, adapted from the work of Nicholas Pileggi. When Casino was released, it experienced something of a minor backlash. It is a fun and broad discussion that is well worth your time, but it spurred some of my own thoughts about Martin Scorsese’s 1995 gangster classic. The podcast that I co-host, The 250, continued our belated Summer of Scorsese last week with a look at Goodfellas.

Casino movie review soundtrack