Front man Philip Green (Kevin Pollack) serves as the casino and hotel CEO, but Sam unofficially runs everything. Plot synopsis courtesy Wikipedia: In 1968, sports handicapper and Mafia associate Sam “Ace” Rothstein (DeNiro) is sent by the Chicago Mafia to Las Vegas to run the Tangiers Casino.

When Scorsese dips into sidebar territory, the film slips up.

As one might expect from the title, the film revolves around a Las Vegas gambling establishment from the 1960’s to the 80’s, where DeNiro’s character is set up as manager, and all the crime, underhanded dealings and mafioso-driven subterfuge that might engender, and when the film is about the casino life it positively sings. Clocking in at three hours, there’s a lot about Casino that works really well and a whole bunch of stuff that doesn’t, most notably the subplot involving DeNiro and Stone as marriage-of-convenience bickerers, which drags out the story to the point you just want it all to end in a hail of gunfire. The third in Scorsese’s early unofficial gangster trilogy, after Mean Streets and the Oscar-nominated Goodfellas, Casino is a bloated, often plodding crime drama that saw Sharon Stone inexplicably snag an Oscar nomination for her work as Robert DeNiro’s on-screen wife, Ginger. Synopsis: A tale of greed, deception, money, power, and murder occur between two best friends: a mafia enforcer and a casino executive compete against each other over a gambling empire, and over a fast-living and fast-loving socialite. Principal Cast : Robert DeNiro, Joe Pesci, Sharon Stone, James Woods, Don Rickles, Alan King, Kevin Pollack, LQ Jones, Dick Smothers, Frank Vincent, John Bloom, Pasquale Cajano, Melissa Prophet, Bill Allison, Vinny Vella, Oscar Goodman, Catherine Scorsese, Philip Suriano, Erika Von Tagen, Richard Reihle.

Casino the best mafia movie