A casino is a place where the lights flash, champagne glasses clink and gambling tables fill with people trying their luck. It’s a fun and exciting atmosphere that attracts millions of visitors each year. Casinos offer many other attractions, including luxurious hotels, cutting-edge technology, flexible event and entertainment spaces and delicious restaurants. However, it is the gaming floor that draws the most attention and generates billions of dollars in profits every year.

Gambling is a strange business, perhaps because of the high stakes involved or simply because of the chance that someone might cheat or steal their way to victory. In the modern world of electronic surveillance, casinos employ a variety of technologies to monitor their games, and the results are analyzed minute-by-minute by computers. Roulette wheels are monitored electronically and alert staff quickly when they aren’t delivering the expected results. The modern casino is like an indoor amusement park for adults, but it would not exist without the games of chance that draw in crowds of visitors each year.

Following the success of Goodfellas, which depicted organized crime in a similar style, Scorsese signed up to direct Casino, based on a nonfiction book by Nicholas Pileggi. Although he doesn’t skimp on the violence (including a torture scene, the attempted murder of De Niro and the death by overdose of Stone’s character), Casino is a tightly wound thriller that manages to keep the audience at the edge of their seats until the very end.