Casino 1995

Casino is a 1995 American crime drama film directed by Martin Scorsese. It is based on the non-fiction book of the same name by Nicholas Pileggi, who also co-wrote the screenplay for the film with Scorsese. The two previously collaborated on the hit film Goodfellas (1990).
The film marks the eighth collaboration between director Scorsese and Robert De Niro, following Mean Streets (1973), Taxi Driver (1976), New York, New York (1977), Raging Bull (1980), The King of Comedy (1983), Goodfellas (1990), and Cape Fear (1991).
In Casino, De Niro stars as Sam "Ace" Rothstein, a Jewish American top gambling handicapper who is called by the Italian Mob to oversee the day-to-day operations at the fictional Tangiers casino in Las Vegas. His character is based on Frank Rosenthal, who ran the Stardust, Fremont, and Hacienda casinos in Las Vegas for the Chicago Outfit, from the 1970s until the early 1980s.[citation needed]
Joe Pesci plays Nicky Santoro, based on real-life Mob enforcer Anthony Spilotro. A made man, Nicky is sent to Vegas to make sure money from the Tangiers is skimmed off the top and the mobsters in Vegas are kept in line. Sharon Stone plays Ginger McKenna, Ace's wife, based on Geri McGee, a role that earned her a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.Of all the bravura visual effects in Martin Scorsese's dazzlingly stylish "Casino," it's a glimpse of ordinary people that delivers the greatest jolt. Strategically timed to offset three hours' worth of vintage Las Vegas glitter, it's a reminder that Mr. Scorsese has given this film's setting the surreal and breathtaking intensity of a money-mad mirage. The real world looks shockingly impoverished by comparison.
With its rivers of cash and mountains of neon, its high rollers and lowlife hoods, "Casino" luxuriantly explores the anatomy of America's gaudiest (and now most cinematically popular) playground. The place is quagmire enough for an epic morality play, but this film's tone is staunchly journalistic, as borne out by its matter-of-fact last words: "And that's that."
So "Casino," based on reportorial work by Nicholas Pileggi, comes equipped with the liabilities of investigative journalism: no conveniently sharp focus, a plot built like a centipede and characters with lives too messy to form conventional dramatic arcs. But the material unearthed by Mr. Pileggi also features truths much stranger than fiction, wildly histrionic showdowns, intricate mob trivia and people whose Faustian conniving and obsessive fury fit perfectly into the Scorsese canon. Mr. Scorsese has been here and done this already in "Goodfellas," but not with his new film's blistering bitterness or its peacock extravagance. The long, astonishing Copacabana sequence in "Goodfellas" was only a warm-up for this.