Gambling in all its forms – from the simple bet with a bookie to the complex casino games – has been part of human civilization for millennia. The first evidence of gambling dates back to 2300 BC in China, dice appeared around 500 AD in Rome, and the game still played at many modern casinos – blackjack – came on the scene in the early 1600s. It’s little wonder that the gambling business is a fascinating topic for movies like Martin Scorsese’s Casino, a masterful depiction of destruction and betrayal.
With a dazzling cast headed by Robert De Niro as Ace, Joe Pesci as the menacing Sam Rothstein, and Sharon Stone as Ginger, the movie is a rip-snorting crime thriller from beginning to end. Even though the film is over three hours long, it never lags or runs out of steam.
While Casino does have some truly hellacious violence (a torture-by-vice sequence that includes a popped eyeball and a baseball bat beating that had to be edited for an NC-17 rating), it’s a movie that is ultimately about something much more profound than mere bloodshed. It’s a look at the way power corrupts and people change.
Casino is a classic tale of the American Dream gone bad. It reveals how the mafia lost control of the most lucrative city in the world, and how the new gambling giants took over and turned Vegas into one of the most opulent messes on earth.