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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.

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.