Casino (2005, DVD)

I had an encounter with a teen.
I'd caught her trying to hustle me.
I said, "You need to stop doing this."
"Why?" she asked. "Because it's against the rules?"
"No, I said, "because you suck at it."
I then explained to her the way things work.

For every action, there are consequences.
If you choose to break the rules, you're on your own.
That doesn't mean others don't break them.
It means they're prepared to pay up if they get caught.
People who have no discipline like to break rules.
They think it's easier. It's not.

If it takes discipline to follow the rules,
it takes even more to break them and get away.
Those who have no discipline get caught.
And when they get caught, they pay dearly.
They have no business playing this game.

--Blind Pepe, the Candyman

Casino is an awesome mob flick, though at the time of its release it was pelted as a bad copy of Goodfellas. The original story, based on the novel by Nicholas Pileggi (who also wrote Goodfellas) tracks a modern-day disaster for the mob. If Goodfellas was about the undoing of omerta, the mob code of silence, Casino is about how the mob lost Las Vegas.

The "big picture" is told through the character of Sam "Ace" Rothstein (Robert DeNiro), a gambler's gambler who is hired by the Chicago mob to oversea the Tangiers, a dramatic composite of three Las Vegas casinos - The Stardust, The Fremont and the Hacienda - run by real-life handicapper, Franky "Lefty" Rosenthal. The mob wants Rothstein in charge because they've invested teamster pension funds to buy their way in. They want Rothstein, a Jew, to front the Casino and keep it profitable so they can take the skim.

But there are problems, not the least of which is Rothstein's ineligibility to run a Casino because of his previous run-ins with the law. Rothstein is hired as "food and beverage manager," to keep his name off the license, but he's the guy in charge. In Ocean's 11, when Andy Garcia's character brags that he knows everything that goes on in his casino, whom do you think he's imitating?

But Rothstein needs more than just political protection, which is why the mob sends out Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci), a mob enforcer loosely based on real-life Chicago enforcer, Anthony "Tony the Art" Spilotro. While Rothstein runs the casino, Santoro's job is to keep an eye on him and protect him from anyone who might get in the way. The problem is that Santoro sees Vegas as a bottomless pit of opportunity. Being this far from anyone who could tell him what to do, he's like a kid in a candy store.

And that's the beginning of troubles.

While Rothstein plays it smooth - like a businessman trying to resolve problems quickly and quietly - Santoro's approach is closer to something out of a western. This is a man who believes in using maximum intimidation with minimal time and effort. In one scene, Santoro shows his loyalty to Rothstein by stabbing a man with a pen, and then mocking his cries. You just know that this guy is leading a freight train of karma just waiting to pull into station.

And then there's love.

Rothstein falls for Ginger McKenna (Sharon Stone), a ticking time bomb in panties. Ginger is the ultimate it-girl for a mobster, a flashy, sexy, diva who follows the money. Rothstein wants her, but as an arm ornament. He wants to trust her, but can't quite bring himself to do so, because he knows what she is. Even as the couple get married and have a child, Rothstein knows she's sneaking calls to her ex, the lecherous Lester Diamond (James Woods). Ginger needs love; Lester needs money; Rothstein has money. You do the math.

The neat thing about the script, co-written by Pileggi and Scorsese, is that it plays out like a Bible story - or a Shakespearean play. This is not a "what if" tale where a single protagonist - fresh out of a screenwriting seminar - develops a need and then goes on a paint-by-numbers journey to get some object of desire. This is a story about characters whose qualities are obvious one. Rothstein is addicted to his games. Ginger wants love. Lester wants money. And Santoro wants to be a big man, maybe something he couldn't be in New York or Chicago, but now that the venue has changed, the fruit is just hanging too low not to reach out and grab.

Casino is, in fact, a mobster version of the ancient Hebrew story of the Fall. God put Adam and Even into the Garden of Eden, a paradise where every wish could be fulfilled, with one exception. In every garden, there's at least one tree containing forbidden fruit, some third rail you can't touch, some ingredient you're not allowed to swallow. Every venture - including the criminal kind - involves discipline. If you aren't careful, if you let your impulses direct your actions, you will lose paradise. It and you will go in separate directions.

Many degrading things have been said about this film, of how it's just a continuation of Goodfellas, but I beg to differ. Goodfellas was about the periphery. The Godfather had focused on the very top of the foodchain, where mobsters coexist with statesmen. Goodfellas had told the untold story of the bottom rung, of a gang of wiseguys not yet "made" because of their lack of Sicilian blood or connections. Casino, while involving the world of the wiseguy (and recycling a number of actors who had played in Goodfellas), is a story about changing times, of how the mob effort to move west didn't quite survive the change in America.

If comparisons are worth making, perhaps it's between these two films - Goodfellas and Casino - and The Godfather, Parts I and II. While The Godfather and Goodfellas take place in New York, Godfather II and Casino center on Las Vegas, that place where mob influence was going to expand, but where unforeseen complications arose. In both cases, there are backstabbings, investigations and a cleaning of the house. Both involve a Jewish character, in a city built by the genius of a Jewish mobster, Meyer Lansky.

But Casino reminds of what happens if you play the game too long.