Movie Lessons: Casino

Good day peoples,

Hope you all well. Today I'm gonna review one of my favourite ganster flicks. Now this flick has a great deal of lessons to learn from and today imma break it down for y'all.

This Week's Ganster Movie lesson

The plot: In Martin Scorsese's brilliant 1995 film Casino, Sam “Ace” Rothstein (Robert De Niro) is a sports handicapper who regularly makes money for the mafia. He’s so good at it, in fact, that when the bosses of the Kansas City organization set up shop in Las Vegas and gain control of a casino, they ask Sam to run it for them. Enter Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci), Sam’s childhood friend and a notorious wiseguy enforcer. Naturally, he wants an extra piece of the action and uses his connections with Sam to set up his own rackets on the relatively uncharted Las Vegas scene. Of course, everything starts off brilliantly, and the casino is soon turning a profit, pleasing the bosses back home. Things get more complicated when Sam falls in love with Ginger McKenna (Sharon Stone), a seasoned Vegas hustler whom he thinks, once married, he can control and make love him.

All eventually goes sour as relations turn ugly, deception creeps in, intense greed blinds all over those involved, and everything, in turn, gets completely screwed up. So that must mean there are number of lessons to be learned from the actions of the main characters in Casino, right? Exactly, and here they are. 

Lessons Learned 

People Don’t Change

Ginger was a renowned hustler in Vegas for many years before Sam met her. Still, he thought he could change her, and he would end up regretting it. Even though she freely admitted that she didn’t love him, he decided to make her his wife anyway. Anyone could see that Ginger was clearly not wife material. For wiseguys, it’s common to have a wife and a girlfriend. Usually, the wife is the one who stays home, cooks dinner and takes care of the kids. Almost every guy has one, but he also has a goomah. This is the girlfriend, considerably younger and more glamorous, who he’d set up with an apartment and visit when he felt like it. Sam wanted one girl to be both, and he paid for it.

Take Care of Everyone 

Ginger was a master of what Sam calls the Hustler’s Code: “She knew how to take care of people, and that’s what Las Vegas was all about,” he explains. For this reason alone, she was able to get away with her hustling antics at casinos all over the city. She made sure to pay off the people who would allow her to do her thing: the dealers, the pit bosses, the floor managers, and valet parkers.

Keep a Low Profile

When involved in illegal activities, you simply have to fly below the radar. Sam, with his peach leisure suits and brass cigarette holder, definitely did not do this and consequently attracted all kinds of unwanted attention as the real head of the Tangiers Casino, who was supposed to be the squeaky-clean decoy Phillip Green.

 

Kiss the Right Asses

Sam would hate to admit it, but he had to plant a few ass-kisses here and there to ensure the smooth running of his casino. He had the right idea by comping the state politicians and other important figures that came through, even though he despised them for their arrogance and hypocrisy.

Check Your Pride

In an interview for a local newspaper, Sam is goaded by a reported into admitting that he was running the day-to-day operations at the Tangiers Casino, even though this position was meant to be carried out by Green. He easily could have avoided making a statement to this effect, but in truth he wanted people to know that he was running the show. 

Don't Sleep With Your Friend's Wife

If there’s one thing that mob bosses, and most men, don’t put up with, it’s messing around with another man’s wife, especially one who’s in the family. Nicky commits a serious mistake when he begins his affair with Ginger. She knew the power she held over Nicky, which is apparent right from the moment that Sam introduces her to Nicky, and of course she wasn’t afraid to use it to get what she wanted, which is as much of Sam’s money she could get her hands on. Nicky should’ve known better, and would wind up paying the ultimate price for his betrayal.

Foolish Scene

Sam’s major weakness was his vanity. However much he liked to pretend that he was a legitimate businessman, deep down he had to have known that he was very lucky to have gotten away with what he’d been up to. He was, after all, working side by side with the Mafia to illegally skim profits from his casino and help launder their cash. So, when Sam decided to fire his incompetent slots manager, who turned out to be the brother-in-law of the county commissioner, he made a huge mistake by refusing to hire him back. He could have given the idiot a meaningless job in another capacity, but instead chose to make an enemy of the one man who could put an end to the whole operation.

the audacious truth