After the success of Goodfellas, Universal gave Martin Scorsese the green light for Casino, a movie that would tell a different sort of mob story. Whereas that film emphasized the blue collar gangsters of New York, Casino focuses on the people who run the casinos and manipulate the flow of money.
This time it’s Sam “Ace” Rothstein (Robert De Niro) who’s running the show, and he believes in the old-fashioned way of doing business. He sees the Tangiers as his personal fiefdom, where he’s supreme over everything from a room full of rigged slot machines to a secret inner circle that skims 25 percent of the total take, turning coins into bills that go into a weekly suitcase and then on to mob bosses in Kansas City.
It’s a ruthless world that Casino reveals, and it’s one that can take down even the most hard-boiled of mobster characters. But the movie rises above petty venality thanks to Stone’s electrifying performance as Ginger, a snake who seduces men like Ace while never losing control.
The movie opens with a series of quick cuts and stylized documentary footage, and the narrator introduces the film’s players over images of their emptying casinos. But as the movie progresses, the narration fades and the style evolves into a more conventional drama. By the end, the movie suggests a nostalgia for the days when mobster-run Vegas was a hellscape and a skepticism over what will replace it.