Casino

Casino is set in the gambling world of Las Vegas in the flamboyant seventies. Sam ‘Ace’ Rothstein (Robert De Niro) plays a crooked businessman from Chicago who finds himself in the highest echelons of the Las Vegas crime world after he is selected by the Mafia to lead the Tangiers Corporation, a chain of gambling halls where a lot of cash – and black-market money – changes hands. Rothstein is assisted in his soaring career by his old friend and fighter Nicky Santori (Joe Pesci) and the attractive Ginger (Sharon Stone), who becomes a sensual obsession for Rothstein. The rise of this trio in the chique, privileged realms of the gambling world eventually leads to excesses and intrigues that will bring them all down. Assisted by Oscar-winning director of photography Robert Richardson (JFK) and production designer Dante Ferretti, director Martin Scorsese has, as usual, done everything to make a visual spectacle as sparkling and hypnotic as possible. Saul Bass, the well-known graphic and title designer ensured a beautiful sequence of titles and contributed to the historic mood of the film. The film is larded with familiar Scorsese themes such as the intoxication of power and the inevitability of treachery, heightened by almost fetishist fixations. Scorsese: ‘Casino is a story of pride and greed spun out of control, bringing down everyone and everything around it.’