Feature Movie Description... continued.
Casino - 1995
Martin Scorsese has made better pure gangster flicks. But this based-on-fact movie is still among his best, as it unfolds an insider account of how the Mob, which built Vegas, eventually blew control of it. Scorsese teams again with DeNiro and Pesci, who are Sam "Ace" Rothstein, a Chicago bookie sent to Vegas to run the Tangiers casino for the Mob, and Nicky Santoro, a made guy who finds his way to Vegas and ultimately manages to help muck up the lucrative Tangiers venture. There's also a love triangle involved (isn't there always in a great movie downfall?). Ace's wife Ginger (Oscar nominee Stone), who he coaxed into marriage despite her truthfulness about being in love with her former pimp (James Woods), becomes dangerously bitter about her loveless relationship with Ace and turns to Nicky for advice--among other things. Thuggish Nicky, meanwhile, is up to his usual thieving and head-busting (including one gruesome scene where he puts a man's head in a vise), which, by association, brings further heat down on a license-less Ace. And though Nicky has been engaging in his low-level shenanigans without the official okay from his Chi-Town bosses, his reputation, his dalliance with Ginger and Ace's stubborn refusal to play ball with a license official loses the Mob control of the casino, and eventually the whole Vegas scene. The jackpot scene: Ace's pithy voiceover--over film of the Tangier's money-counting procedure--about how the casino biz legitimized the Mob and gave them free access to legally bilk the punter patrons. "What do you think we're doing out here in the middle of the desert? It's all this money," says Ace. "This is the end result of all the bright lights, the comp trips, of all the champagne and free hotel suites, the broads and all the booze. It's all been just for us to get your money."