Casino is a 1995 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.
Robert De Niro stars as Sam "Ace" Rothstein, a Jewish top gambling handicapper who is called by the Mob to oversee the day-to-day operations at the fictional Tangiers casino in Las Vegas. The story is based on Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal, who ran the Stardust, Fremont and the Hacienda casinos in Las Vegas for the Chicago Outfit from the 1970s until the early 1980s.
Joe Pesci plays Nicky Santoro, based on the real-life Anthony "Tony the Ant" Spilotro, an intimidating enforcer and psychopath. Nicky is sent to Vegas to make sure that money from the Tangiers is skimmed off the top and that the mobsters in Vegas are kept in line. Sharon Stone plays Ace's wife, the self-obsessed and devious Ginger, a role that earned her a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress and an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.
When released, Casino had the most uses of the word "fuck" (398) in a feature length film, but was almost outdone two years later by the film Nil by Mouth. Casino has been considered a companion piece to Scorsese's earlier film, Goodfellas (1990), which also starred De Niro and Pesci, and was written by Pileggi and Scorsese.
Plot
Casino is the story of Sam "Ace" Rothstein, a shrewd Jewish-American sports handicapper. As is often the case with those engaged in such activity, he is regularly harassed by local law enforcement, but is protected by the mob after proving himself as a top earner. Impressed with his work, Rothstein in 1973 is recruited by Midwest mob bosses to manage the new Tangiers Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. The bosses have set up the casino to "skim" profits (stealing a portion of the cash collected from gamers before the income is reported to the authorities), and want someone in charge whom they can trust.
In 1983, as Rothstein gets in his car and turns the ignition, the car explodes. The rest of the story is a flashback, revealing how the mob set up its operation in Las Vegas and chose Rothstein to manage it; how Nicky Santoro came to Vegas and how, eventually, organized crime lost control, never to have a hold on something so valuable again.
The mob's presence in Vegas stems largely from connections with corrupt representatives of the Teamsters. Their chief contact is Andy Stone. With a loan from the union's pension fund and a powerless front man named Philip Green acting as chairman of the board, the Tangiers becomes a reality. Rothstein is not licensed by the gaming authorities of Nevada because of his criminal record. But this is largely circumvented by lax rules that allow casino managers to work while their applications are pending -- which, for many, can take years.
Ace, with help from an old friend, Billy Sherbert, is so good at his job that he doubles the amount of money sent back home to his bosses. As he builds the Tangiers into one of the biggest casinos in Vegas, he falls in love with Ginger McKenna, one of the most successful hustlers in town. Her only missions in life are making money and taking care of her old boyfriend, a small-time pimp named Lester Diamond.
The bosses send Nicholas "Nicky" Santoro, a mob enforcer and Sam's boyhood friend, to Vegas to protect Ace and the casino from rival gangsters. Nicky, well-known for his violent temper, makes it clear that he intends to set up his own money-making schemes.
Ace and Ginger have a daughter and get married, but only after Ginger is assured that she will be taken care of financially for the rest of her life. As a sign of his trust in her, Ace gives Ginger the only key to a safe deposit box containing 2 million dollars. However, Ginger stays in contact with Lester, which puts a severe strain on her marriage. At one point Ace has Lester beaten up in front of Ginger, which leads to further resentment (and substance abuse) on her part.
Nicky sets up his own criminal operations in Vegas, including loan sharking, shaking down other criminals and using his Vegas crew to cheat at cards. When the police put him in a Black Book, which bans him from entering any casino in Nevada, Nicky brings in friends from back home and his brother Dominic to commit robberies all over the city. Nicky sets up legitimate businesses such as a restaurant and a jewelry store as a front. He sends trusted lieutenant Frank Marino back home with money to keep the bosses happy.
Rothstein's relationship with Nicky becomes strained because Nicky's activities are starting to draw public attention to Ace's past. In addition, Ginger is increasingly turning to Nicky as a confidante. Ace fires an incompetent employee named Don Ward who is the brother-in-law of Pat Webb, one of the powerful county commissioners. Failing to convince Rothstein to give the employee his job back, the commissioner retaliates by arranging for Ace to be denied a casino license without a fair hearing.
Ace takes a new title as entertainment director and begins appearing on television, challenging the commissioner to a public debate. The bosses do not like the attention Ace is drawing to himself and want him to stop. Ace blames Nicky for causing so much trouble that every activity is now being closely scrutinized. Nicky threatens him in a tense argument in the middle of the Great Basin Desert, damaging their relationship even more.
Meanwhile, the "skim" is starting to get lighter and lighter and the bosses realize that the people they sent to steal are stealing money from them. They assign Kansas City underboss Artie Piscano to make sure nobody "skims the skim." Because of Piscano's incredible ineptitude, he begins keeping records of everything he knows and naming names recklessly in public. This will prove fatal as Piscano's Kansas City store has been bugged by federal investigators.
Ginger again hooks up with Lester Diamond, after having absconded to Los Angeles with her daughter and 2 million dollars in cash. Ace is enraged and threatens her. Ginger complains to Nicky, who agrees to become Ginger's "sponsor" and the two begin having a secret affair.
Ace comes home to find Ginger gone and their young daughter locked in her room and tied to her bed. He and Ginger argue and she tells Nicky to have Ace killed. When he refuses to kill his friend of more than 30 years, she attacks Nicky. He throws her out of the restaurant.
An out-of-control Ginger creates a scene at home while trying to collect her possessions. Eventually she manages to make off with the 2 million in the safe deposit box. After spending the money within months, Ginger eventually dies of a drug overdose in Los Angeles far away from both her daughter and husband. Sam's voiceover suggests Ginger was purposely given a "hot dose," and talks about how he had paid for a second autopsy.
Ultimately, the FBI collects enough information to make other arrests, their case strengthened by Piscano's expense reports. Piscano suffers a fatal heart attack as he realizes the magnitude of his error.
The Tangiers shuts down, and most of Nicky's crew is taken into custody. The bosses are also arrested and taken to court. Andy Stone is murdered so he won't talk. The same fate awaits several other casino executives.
The story then returns to the point in time at which Rothstein's Cadillac Eldorado has been rigged to explode. It is revealed that Ace survived the blast with minor burns due to the presence of a metal plate inserted in the car by GM to correct a design flaw. Ace suspects that it was not the bosses who rigged his car to blow up, but Nicky.
Nicky's crew is eventually released from jail. At a meeting in a cornfield, Nicky and his brother Dominic are viciously pummelled with aluminum baseball bats by fellow mobsters including their friend and right-hand man Frank Marino. Dominic and Nicky are then buried alive.
With the mob facing trial and the Teamsters influence at an end, Las Vegas undergoes a dramatic change. The Tangiers and other famous hotels of the Vegas strip are demolished and replaced by "family-friendly" resorts, built by corporations using junk bonds. "In the old days, dealers knew your name, what you drank, what you played," Rothstein laments. "Today, it's like checkin' into an airport."
The final scene shows Ace watching sporting events on multiple televisions from his new home in San Diego, still making bets.
Cast
Development
The research for Casino began when Pileggi read a report from the Las Vegas Sun in 1980 about a domestic argument between Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal, a casino figure and his wife, Geri McGee, a former topless dancer.[2] This gave him an idea to focus on a new book about the true story of mob infringement in Las Vegas during the 1970s, when filming of Goodfellas (the screenplay which he co-wrote with Scorsese) was coming to an end.[3] Pileggi decided to contact Scorsese about taking the helm of the project which would become known as Casino.[2] Scorsese expressed interest in the project calling this an "idea of success, no limits".[4] Although, he was keen to release the book and then concentrate on a film adaption, Scorsese encouraged him to "reverse the order".[5]
Screenplay
Scorsese and Pileggi collaborated on the script lasting for a total of five months, towards the end of 1994.[3] Real-life characters such as Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal, Geri, Anthony Spilotro and his brother were reshaped. Some characters were combined as well as parts of the story being set in Las Vegas instead of Chicago. A problem emerged when they were forced to refer Chicago as "back home" and use the words "adapted from a true story" instead of "based on a true story".[4] They also decided to change the script, so that the character of Sam "Ace" Rothstein only worked at the Tangiers Casino as a glimpse to highlight how far we went on the casino floor to the kitchen and the food.[4] According to Scorsese, the initial opening sequence was to feature the main character, Sam Rothstein, fighting with his estranged wife, Ginger, on the lawn on their house. Since the scene was too detailed, they changed the sequence to show the explosion of Sam's car and see him fly into the air before hovering over the flames in slow motion—like a soul about to go straight down in hell.[4]
Principal Photography
Filming took place in The Riviera Casino in Las Vegas to replicate the fictional Tangiers, during the night - which was once as late as 4:00 in the morning. According to the producer Barbara De Fina, there was no point building a set if the same cost was to use a real-life one.[4] The opening scene - Sam's car explosion - was shot three times with the latter one being used for the film from the real life account of Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal of the way he managed to escape.[4] The precise details of the explosion were seen to suggest that you never forget these moments if you know how close you can come to being killed.[4] According to Martin Scorsese, "we (with Nicholas Pileggi) wanted to show the end of the old way".[4]
Differences between fact and fiction
- The scenes where Nicky stabs a man in the neck with a pen for insulting Sam and where Nicky gets drunk in the casino and hits Billy Sherbert in the face with a telephone are entirely fictional. On an interesting note, Nicky says to Sherbert, "What are you staring at, you bald-headed Jew prick?": this is one of Don Rickles' (Sherbert) trademark insults, although in this case, Joe Pesci (Nicky) says it to him rather than Rickles saying it to somebody else.
- The majority of the actual events took place in Kansas City, Missouri, even more so than Las Vegas. In the 1970s, the Kansas City mob was involved in a gangland war over control of the River Quay entertainment district, in which three buildings were bombed and several gangsters were killed. Police investigations into the mob took hold after Kansas City Boss Nick Civella was recorded discussing gambling bets on Super Bowl IV (where the Kansas City Chiefs defeated the Minnesota Vikings). The gang war and investigation would lead to the end of mob control of the Stardust Casino, which was the basis for the film (although the Kansas City connections are minimized in the movie).
- The character of Frank Marino (played by Frank Vincent and based on Frank Cullotta) participates in the killing of the Santoro brothers. In reality, Frank Cullotta was not present and played no part in the beating of the Spilotro brothers (on whom the Santoro brothers were based), and only betrayed them by testifying against them about the M & M murders (as the 1962 murders of James Miraglia and Billy McCarthy in Chicago were called) when Anthony Spilotro ordered him killed over the phone, although Cullotta's testimony was not enough to convict Spilotro. Cullotta also has a cameo as Curly, one of Gaggi's hitmen near the end of the film.
- The character of John Nance, based on George Vandermark, is murdered in the film with two gunshots to the stomach and one to the head and left in open view. The real George Vandermark was murdered along with his drug addict son, Jeffrey, but his body was never found. Furthermore, Bill Allison (Nance's actor), is a former casino owner and served as a technical advisor for the film, along with Frank Cullotta (who plays Curly, Nance's killer).
- In the film Artie Piscano, based on Kansas City Underboss Carl "Tuffy" DeLuna, dies of a heart attack during an FBI raid on his home. In reality, DeLuna was arrested, tried and sentenced to 30 years. He did in fact keep extensive cryptic notes hidden in his basement which, together with wiretaps, connected all the dots the FBI needed. He was released from prison in 1998 and died in Kansas City in 2008, the penultimate surviving defendant. The last defendant was Rosenthal himself, who died of a heart attack in October 2008.
- The Tangiers Casino, based on the Stardust Resort & Casino, is shown to be demolished at the end of the movie, whereas in real life, the Stardust Casino was not demolished until March 2007. On an interesting note, bars from the Hoagy Carmichael song Stardust can be heard in the soundtrack.
- In the movie, Robert De Niro's character, Sam "Ace" Rothstein, juggles on television. However, Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal, the real-life counterpart of Ace, says on his official website that he never did such a thing.
- The place in the film where the bosses of the Chicago mob met to pick up and distribute their Las Vegas money was in a boarded up, out-of-business ARCO gas station on the southeast corner of Harlem Ave. and Division St. in Oak Park, IL.
- The "head in the vise" scene happens while Nicky is helping Sam in Vegas. In reality, the incident took place about 10 years before the setting of the film, and was the real reason why Spilotro became a made man.
Reception
While the film was heavily criticized for its excessive violence, it garnered a mostly positive critical response. Rotten Tomatoes gave the film an 83% "fresh" rating.[6] On Metacritic, the rating is 73 (generally favourable reviews) out of 100 based on 17 reviews, and is one of five Scorsese films featured on the Internet Movie Database's Top 250.[7]
Awards
Sharon Stone was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role as well as a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture — Drama. Martin Scorsese was also nominated for a Golden Globe as Best Director - Motion Picture.
Soundtrack
Track listing
Disc one
- "Contempt - Theme De Camille" - Georges Delerue
- "Angelina/Zooma, Zooma Medley" - Louis Prima
- "Hoochie Coochie Man" - Muddy Waters
- "I'll Take You There" - The Staple Singers
- "Nights in White Satin" - The Moody Blues
- "How High The Moon" - Les Paul & Mary Ford
- "Hurt" - Timi Yuro
- "Ain't Got No Home" - Clarence 'Frogman' Henry
- "Without You" - Nilsson
- "Love Is the Drug" - Roxy Music
- "I'm Sorry" - Brenda Lee
- "Go Your Own Way" - Fleetwood Mac
- "The Thrill Is Gone" - B.B. King
- "Love Is Strange" - Mickey & Sylvia
- "The 'In' Crowd" - Ramsey Lewis
- "Stardust" - Hoagy Carmichael
Disc two
- "Walk on the Wild Side" - Jimmy Smith
- "Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song)" - Otis Redding
- "I Ain't Superstitious" - Jeff Beck Group
- "The Glory of Love" - The Velvetones
- "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" - Devo
- "What a Diff'rence a Day Made" - Dinah Washington
- "Working in the Coal Mine" - Lee Dorsey
- "House of the Rising Sun" - The Animals
- "Those Were the Days" - Cream
- "Who Can I Turn To (When Nobody Needs Me)" - Tony Bennett
- "Slippin' and Slidin'" - Little Richard
- "You're Nobody Till Somebody Loves You" - Dean Martin
- "Compared to What" - Les McCann & Eddie Harris
- "Basin Street Blues/When It's Sleepy Time Down South" - Louis Prima
- "St. Matthew Passion (Wir setzen uns mit Tränen nieder)" - Johann Sebastian Bach (Chicago Symphony Orchestra)
Additional songs in the film
Trailers for the film also prominently used "Layla", by Derek and the Dominos.
References
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Scorsese on Scorsese. Faber and Faber. 1996. ISBN 978-0571220021.
- Evans, David (2006). DeNiro: A Biography.
External links
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