Some came down especially hard on the idea that Pacino, Pesci, and particularly De Niro were repeating themselves. Sky-high expectations for a de facto Goodfellas follow-up and a Pacino/De Niro team-up meant that both movies garnered a lot of reviews that were more respectable than ecstatic, and months later these two awards hopefuls received a grand total of one Oscar nomination between them - for Sharon Stone’s career-best performance in Casino.Ĭriticisms leveled at both movies at the time zeroed in on the crime-picture familiarity that now makes them feel like classics. Yet at the time, this one-two punch wasn’t necessarily regarded as a triumph.

Just a few weeks later, he shared the screen with fellow acting titan Al Pacino for the first time in Heat, Michael Mann’s cops-and-robbers epic. In November, he reunited with his frequent collaborator Martin Scorsese for Casino, a companion piece of sorts to their 1990 masterpiece Goodfellas.

Twenty-five years ago, Robert De Niro enjoyed a particularly stellar year that would change his career forever. (Photo by Phillip Caruso/©Unversal, ©Warner Brothers/courtesy Everett Collection)

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