If the opening eight-minute cocktail of cocaine, noodles and carnage makes most Hollywood action movies look arthritic, the climax will make your head explode. Takashi Miike turns what might have been a routine yakuza yarn into a dazzling (and sometimes revolting) burst of film-making adrenaline, the first of a trilogy. Robert De Niro wears natty threads Joe Pesci crushes someone’s head in a vice Sharon Stone and James Woods steal the show. Martin Scorsese seems almost to be parodying himself in this portrait of a Las Vegas bookie running a mob casino, but it’s a wild ride with non-stop needle drops.
