Gangsters go there to make money, gamblers to lose money, and showgirls to build character.
In the movies, Vegas is where dreams are decimated, where greed and cheese overcome the talented glad-hander, the reckless schmoozer, the ambitious naif. Martin Scorsese's Casino and Mike Figgis' Leaving Las Vegas offer two more angles on Vegas as the perfect place for psychic meltdown. Scorsese's film is, of course, meticulous and often mesmerizing. The movie is about seduction and confusion, large scale. Sam is a lug, in the end, like Henry, undone by his pride, his crazily outsized sense of his place in the world.