A casino is a facility that houses and accommodates certain types of gambling activities. Casinos can also offer other entertainment, such as restaurants, night clubs, and retail stores. Casinos are most often located in hotels and other large commercial buildings. They also may be built in remote locations such as islands or in mountains. Casino games include slots, table games such as blackjack and roulette, and card game such as poker. They can also feature other activities, such as sports betting and horse racing.
In Casino, a mobster named Sam “Ace” Rothstein (De Niro) runs the Tangiers hotel in Sin City while working for mobsters back east. He falls for a hooker/call girl/Vegas hustler called Ginger McKenna (Stone). As a dashing underworld hero, Ace is a bit smaller than life, but he tries to run his operations on a principled level and resist the temptation of using his power for his own gains.
In a brilliant early sequence that echoes Goodfellas’ Copacabana interlude, Scorsese’s prowling Steadicam zooms through closed doors at the Tangiers, bringing us into the money-counting room. Skimming from the till is an art form there, and Ace countenances it as long as the kickbacks go to a group of old-school mobster bosses in Kansas City. But it’s Stone who elevates the movie, a feisty charmer who revels in her ability to seduce men (“a smart hustler like her could keep a man awake for two or three days”) while refusing to give up her own pimp.
