No one stays at the top forever.

Rating: 7/10 (16 August 2010)

"A lot of holes in the desert, and a lot of problems are buried in those holes."
I learned three things from Casino: running a casino is a tough business, Las Vegas is a complicated town, and a terrible wife makes life much harder.
Casino is a lengthy movie about the rise and fall of a couple of Vegas big-shots, and the loss of the essence of old-school Vegas, itself. The story is told primarily from the points of view of Sam "Ace" Rothstein (Robert De Niero) and Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci), two guys who have known each other for years, and come to make money in Vegas in very different ways.
Sam is a genius at all aspects of gambling that's tapped by the mob bosses back east to run a casino for them, while Nicky is a muscle guy who's there to protect Sam's operation. We watch them make a lot of money, and get into a lot of trouble because of their respective weaknesses/excesses. It's an entertaining movie, and the 179 minute runtime will pass by pretty quickly.
Both De Niro and Pesci were excellent, with many other great actors supporting their performances. A lot of your enjoyment of this movie will hinge on your preference for the genre. Casino is very much a mob-type movie, though it's not a Godfather Part II Las Vegas re-tread, by any means. If even someone like me who's not a particular fan of this kind of movie can enjoy it, then that's a promising sign that most others will enjoy it, too.