Things become seedy as his childhood friend Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci) moves to Vegas and begins to hustle the very casino Sam works at. He doesn’t have a gaming license, nor does he care as he simply changes his job title and simply runs the casino from afar. Sam ‘Ace’ Rothstein (Robert Deniro) is a sports handicapper and a mob associate who is put in charge of a Casino known as the Tangiers. It’s textured and glitzy, and you know from the very beginning it’ll all fall down, just not how or why.Ĭasino is a fairly long film at 2:52:00 or so, so I won’t bore you with my traditional narrative synopsis, i’ll just briefly summarize it for you folks. The irony lies in the hookers, the shady business deals, fraud, the presence of hired muscle and drug-filled pockets. We rationalize casinos as classy places, an excuse to wear a suit or look smart.
The risk, the seedy underground nature of it all, and the heavily ironic opulent atmosphere. There’s something about the allure of gambling films that’s entirely unique. Thing is, when you have such a vast and praised filmography like Scorsese’s even a long, gritty, and gripping epic like Casino can be dismissed as ‘minor’ in comparison to the likes of Goodfellas, or Raging Bull.
Casino is one of Martin Scorsese’s generally underrated films.
