The last third of Casino slows down to a lumbering pace, the disintegrating relationship between Ace and Ginger sucking the life out of the movie.

Scorsese recognizes in the sights, sounds, underlying sleaze and unbridled greed of Vegas the perfect playground for criminals looking for a veneer of respectability as they rake in the easy profits. Eventually Ace's life begins to unravel: he insults the wrong local power brokers and runs afoul of Vegas' licensing requirements Nicky's violent methods reflect badly on Ace's business and Ginger looks to rob him blind and make off with their daughter.įurther developing the visual style of GoodFellas, Scorsese directs the front end of Casino with plenty of colour, movement, and panache, the intermittent narration by De Niro and especially Pesci adding sharp humour and plenty of personality.

Ace meets and marries professional hustler Ginger McKenna (Sharon Stone), a gorgeous but money-hungry gold digger with an unhealthy attachment to small time hustler Lester Diamond (James Woods). Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci) was Ace's extremely violent sidekick on their way up in the shadow of the criminal world, and Ace is not thrilled when Nicky also relocates to Vegas. Ace operates a tight joint, weeding out the lower class criminals, disposing of cheats, and maximizing profits, becoming a well-respected man about town, in as far as Vegas respects any man. In the early 1970s his mid-west Mafia associates, backed by the Teamsters, reward him by giving him his own Las Vegas casino, Tangiers, to run. Martin Scorsese delivers another intense, if not perfect, journey into the intriguing and violent world of Crime Inc.Įxpert handicapper Sam 'Ace' Rothstein (Robert De Niro) always possessed a talent for making money from gambling. Inspired by true events and real-life characters, Casino celebrates Vegas before it was scrubbed clean and gentrified.

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