[6] It stars Robert De Niro, Sharon Stone, Joe Pesci, Don Rickles, Kevin Pollak, Frank Vincent and James Woods.

The primary characters are based on real people: Sam is inspired by the life of Frank Rosenthal, also known as "Lefty", who ran the Stardust, Fremont, Marina, and Hacienda casinos in Las Vegas for the Chicago Outfit from 1968 until 1981.

In 1973, sports handicapper and Mafia associate Sam "Ace" Rothstein is sent by the Chicago Outfit to Las Vegas to run the Tangiers Casino, with frontman Philip Green.

Nicky recruits his younger brother Dominick and childhood friend Frankie Marino to gather an experienced crew specializing in shakedowns and jewelry burglaries.

Nicky's criminal activities in Las Vegas start drawing too much media and police attention, and he is eventually placed in the Black Book, banning him from every casino in Nevada.

Sam starts hosting a local television talk show from inside the casino, irritating both Nicky and the bosses back home for bringing more unneeded attention.

When the Midwest bosses discover that people on the inside are stealing from their skim, they install incompetent Kansas City underboss Artie Piscano to oversee the operation.

Additionally, an FBI bug placed in Piscano's grocery store catches him talking in detail about the skim, prompting a full investigation into the Tangiers Casino.

Invited to attend a meetup in a remote Illinois cornfield, they are brutally beaten with baseball bats upon arriving, stripped of their clothes, and buried alive in a shallow grave.

[7] This gave him an idea to focus on a new book about the true story of mob infringement in Las Vegas during the 1970s, when filming of Goodfellas (whose screenplay he co-wrote with Scorsese) was coming to an end.

[11] According to Scorsese, the initial opening sequence was to feature the main character, Sam Rothstein, fighting with his estranged wife Ginger on the lawn of their house.

The scene was too detailed, so they changed the sequence to show the explosion of Sam's car and him flying into the air before hovering over the flames in slow motion—like a soul about to go straight down to hell.

[11] Filming took place at night in the Riviera casino in Las Vegas, with the nearby defunct Landmark Hotel as the entrance, to replicate the fictional Tangiers.

Several edits were made in order to reduce the rating to R.[19] The film was shot in the common-top Super 35 format as it allowed the picture to be reformatted for television broadcast.

"[20] Cinematographer Robert Richardson, on the other hand, was not impressed with the quality of the release prints, and did not touch the format again until Kill Bill: Volume 1, at which point the digital intermediate process was available.

The site's critical consensus reads, "Impressive ambition and bravura performances from an outstanding cast help Casino pay off in spite of a familiar narrative that may strike some viewers as a safe bet for director Martin Scorsese.

"[28] Janet Maslin of The New York Times analyzed the film's journalistic approach resulted with "no conveniently sharp focus, a plot built like a centipede and characters with lives too messy to form conventional dramatic arcs."

However, he noted Pesci "holds up his end of the picture perfectly well, but Nicky is basically the same character he won an Oscar for in Goodfellas, but with a shade less of an edge.

"[30] Peter Travers of Rolling Stone wrote the film "is not the equal of Mean Streets or GoodFellas, the more instinctive pieces in the crime trilogy that the flawed Casino completes (Coppola's Godfather Part III fell off far more precipitously).

"[33] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film two and a half stars out of four, writing Casino is a "sometime-dazzling, often-disappointing film from the great Martin Scorsese, who too often seems like he's replaying his greatest hits with this picture, and not to the best effect ... DeNiro's relationship with Cathy Moriarty in Raging Bull was better and the flash-temper role by Pesci is a carbon copy of his work in Goodfellas.

"[34] Desson Howe of The Washington Post wrote the film is "not great" and that clearly "Scorsese and Pileggi are trying to disinter the success of GoodFellas, their last collaboration.