Stars: Sharon Stone, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, James Woods, Don Rickles, Alan King, Kevin Pollak, L.Q. Jones, Dick Smothers, Frankie Avalon, Steve Allen, Jayne Meadows, Jerry Vale

Director: Martin Scorsese

Summary: The story of a Jewish front man for the Las Vegas Mob and his wife who jinxes the operation.

Martin Scorsese, one of America's most influential filmmakers, returns to the world of mobsters, greed, and excess that he explored so compellingly in 1990's GOODFELLAS. Set in the 1970s and revelling in the minute details of how Las Vegas casinos operate, the film chronicles the rise and fall of casino manager Ace Rothstein (Robert De Niro). As the king of his domain, Ace efficiently runs the business and regularly sends lots of cold cash to his bosses. Helping him keep the casino's employees and customers honest is his best friend, Nicky (Joe Pesci), a violent sociopath. Although Ace aims to run a relatively respectable casino, the volatile Nicky wants to take over the entire gambling mecca, and when Ginger McKenna (Sharon Stone), a seasoned Vegas hustler, enters the picture, Ace and Nicky's friendship is complicated even further. As drugs and alcohol become a bigger part of Ginger's life, all three are eventually brought down by their own greed and blind ambition. CASINO shares many similarities with GOODFELLAS, beginning with a script that was cowritten by Scorsese and Nicholas Pileggi. Regulars De Niro and Pesci are first rate once again as the dissimilar companions, but it is Stone who steals the show with her gruelling, intense performance.

WIN DVDs by rating this DVD

Average User Rating:

WIN DVDS by being amongst the first to review this DVD. Reviewing DVDs earns you bonus entries and lets you WIN DVDs!Please login before reviewing this DVD. If you're a new user, register for free and enter to WIN FREE DVDs!

An unconvincing exercise in moral complexity, 21 is based on Ben Mezrich's book Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions. Jim Sturgess (Across the Universe) plays brilliant blue collar scholar Ben Campbell, whose doubts that he'll win a scholarship to Harvard Medical School compel him to join a secret, M.I.T. gang of math whiz kids. Under the silky but chilling command of a math professor (Kevin Spacey), Jim and the others master card counting --the statistical analysis of cards dealt in blackjack games. The team lives a humdrum existence during the week, but on weekends in Sin City the students are rolling in cash, frequenting exclusive clubs and feeling on top of the world. Ben even gets the girl: a comely fellow card counter played by Kate Bosworth. Despite all the success, Ben feels ethically compromised and indeed director Robert Luketic (Legally Blonde, Across the Universe), in the old tradition of American movies, plays it both ways where fun vices are concerned. On the one hand, it feels so good --on the other, ahem, we know it's wrong. That studied ambivalence proves wearing after a while, making the most interesting character in the film a casino watchdog played by Laurence Fishburne. A master at reading the emotions of gamblers beating the house with a scam, he's admirable for being good at his job, but repellent for wrecking the faces of counters in casino dungeons. He's all about moral complexity in the tradition of anti-heroes, and a truly provocative element in an otherwise superficial movie. --Tom Keogh

Aspect Ratio:	2.33 Wide Screen
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Production Notes, Filmography, Theatrical Trailer
Subtitles:	Danish, Dutch, English, Norwegian, Portuguese
Year:	1995
Release Date:	November 30, 1999
Runtime:	171 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	903 053 9
Keywords:	English, General, Casino, Drama
Genre:	Drama