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Unlike other Vegas movies, which barely scratch the surface and focus on opulence, neon signs, and gamblers winning money at slots and cards, Casino is more than just another hedonistic spectacle. It’s also a fascinating history lesson that explains how the Mafia lost control of Las Vegas and how the city reinvented itself.
While Scorsese’s film does not shy away from the viciousness of the era (a torture-by-vice sequence involving a popped eyeball and a sound-designed baseball bat beating both had to be trimmed for an NC-17 rating), it is ambivalent about the whole thing, expressing both love for the old ways and skepticism about what will replace them. This is evident in the final scene, which shows images of the Tangiers being demolished over Ace and Nicky’s lament that “the town will never be the same.”
Casino is a liminal space—not between Victoriannism and Modernism, but between organized crime and organized finance, gangsters versus unions and their foibles, on the one hand, and big corporations antiseptically displacing them on the other. It’s a blurry, blood-soaked frontier, but it is ultimately a story of the power of money and the human need for it.