Casino is an
Academy Award nominated
1995 crime drama film directed by
Martin Scorsese. It is based on the book of the same name by
Nicholas Pileggi and Larry Shandling.
Robert De Niro stars as Sam "Ace" Rothstein, a Jewish chain-smoking 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 the late
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 by the Chicago Outfit to Vegas to make sure that money from the Tangiers is skimmed off the top and that the casinos and mobsters in Vegas are kept in line.
Sharon Stone plays Ace's wife, the self-obsessed, spoiled, devious and sly 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" (422) in a feature length film
[[1]], but was outdone two years later by the film
Nil by Mouth [www.imdb.com/title/tt0119792/trivia] although it remains the highest number of uses of the word in an American film excluding documentaries.
Casino has been considered a companion piece to Scorsese's earlier film,
Goodfellas (
1990), which also starred De Niro and Pesci.