Few films take so many risks and succeed as beautifully as Casino, a fascinating portrait of power, betrayal and destruction. Robert De Niro is absolutely spellbinding as Sam “Ace” Rothstein, who rises from humble beginnings to become one of the mob’s most powerful leaders. But unlike the gangsters of Goodfellas, he and his allies are not just blue collar criminals; they run Sin City.
Casino starts with a money-counting sequence (filmed with deliberate echoes of Goodfellas’ Copacabana scene) that puts us in the inner circle of the Tangiers, one of the world’s great casinos, where skimming cash from slot machines is a well-oiled process. Then it’s sorted and stuffed into suitcases for delivery to mob bosses in Kansas City. It’s a fascinating inside look at an industry that makes its money by rigging the odds and taking advantage of the naivety of the gamblers.
But the film is not just about casinos; it’s also about gambling, and the way that it has transformed society in America and throughout the world. This is not a romanticized version of how it all went down; it’s an unflinching, faithful portrayal. It’s not without its share of violence, including a torture-by-vice sequence that includes a popped eyeball and a shockingly edited, sound-designed baseball bat beating (both scenes were actually trimmed to avoid an NC-17 rating). But Scorsese uses this violence with ambivalence; he is not fetishizing it. Instead, he is showing that it’s all part of the game.