Excellent crime drama

Rating: 9/10 (5 May 2002)

In Martin Scorsece's hit "mafia" film, depicting the rise and fall of group of mobsters in Las Vegas. Rob Deniro and Joe Peschi give top notch performances as the lead mobsters running the Tangiers casino in Vegas. In the first half we are shown how Deniro's character tightly operates his casino. He knows all the tricks in the books that hustlers try to pull, however noone can pull a one up on this guy. Peschi is his hitman who does most of the dirty work, but is eventually banned from all casinos. Turning in a fiery, top notch (Oscar nomination) performance is Sharon Stone as a drug hustler who enchants Deniro one day as she shows up at the casino. They marry and he hopes to "make" him fall in love with her one day, because her true love is a pimp (played by James Wood). Needless to say the last hour or so of this movie is vicious as we see the FBI crackdown on all the schemes the mobsters were trying so hard to hide in the casinos. Stone and Peschi, in particular have brutal demises. 9.3/10 extreme profanity, violence, and partial nudity. Excellent acting, direction, plot, and soundtrack. Only down side is the length of the movie, running well into above 3 1/2 hours.