Film

Casino

Name: Casino
Genre: Crime, Drama
Released: 1995
Cast: Robert De Niro, Sharon Stone, Joe Pesci, James Woods, Don Rickles

Scorsese's three-hour anatomy of Las Vegas as a machine — how a mob-run casino operates, skims, and eventually collapses under its own greed. Told through voiceover and dazzling tracking shots, it's less a heist film than a corporate biography with bodies in the desert. For anyone who loves process, excess, and slow-motion moral rot.

TMDb rating

8.0

If you liked this

GoodFellas1990

Scorsese, De Niro and Pesci again, five years earlier, doing the same trick of narrated rise-and-fall — tighter, meaner, and arguably the better film.

But If you've just watched Casino, the overlap in style and cast might feel like diminishing returns rather than a discovery.

Heat1995

De Niro again, same year even, but as a cop-and-thief chess match instead of a corporate empire — cooler, colder, more procedural.

But It's a different animal entirely — less excess and spectacle, more silence and surveillance. Don't expect the same rush.

The Departed2006

Scorsese's later crime epic swaps Vegas glitz for Boston grit, with DiCaprio and Nicholson trading the empire-building for infiltration and betrayal.

But Faster, twistier, more plot-driven — if you loved Casino's slow accumulation of detail, this might feel rushed.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Killing1956

Same obsession with the mechanics of a criminal enterprise and the fatal flaw — a woman, an ego — that brings it all down. Casino's ancestor, four decades earlier.

Kubrick's black-and-white heist noir, told in the same fractured, procedural style Scorsese loves — a perfect plan undone by human weakness and greed.

But It's tiny and austere next to Casino's sprawl — 84 minutes, no color, no glamour, just cold mechanics.

Boogie Nights1997

Same architecture — an industry, a family of outsiders, a golden era curdling into disaster — just swapped for 70s porn instead of 70s Vegas.

But Tonally lighter and funnier for most of its runtime before it turns dark, which can feel like a different film.

American Hustle2013

Con artists, wigs, ambition and betrayal, all wrapped in the same kind of loving period detail and voiceover-driven momentum.

But More comedic and scattershot — it wants you smiling as much as gripped, which dilutes the tension Casino built so carefully.

The Wolf of Wall Street2013

Scorsese again, chronicling another American empire of excess and fraud with the same manic energy, narration, and eventual reckoning.

But It's louder and more comic in tone — the horror is played for laughs far more than Casino ever allows.

Scarface1983

The blueprint for the American-dream-gone-toxic story: an outsider claws to the top of a criminal empire, then can't stop himself from burning it down.

But Broader and more operatic — less interested in mechanics and process, more in spectacle and one man's descent.

Donnie Brasco1997

A quieter, more intimate Mafia film about loyalty curdling into betrayal, with Pesci-adjacent menace but a smaller, sadder scale.

But It trades scope and glamour for something more restrained — don't expect the same visual dazzle or grandeur.

Once Upon a Time in America1984

De Niro once more, in an even longer, more elegiac gangster epic that spans decades and treats crime as tragic myth rather than thriller.

But Its glacial pace and nonlinear structure demand patience Casino never quite asks for — this is slower and sadder.

Showgirls1995

Same city, same year, same mythology of reinvention and corruption — just swapped from tragedy to camp. Vegas seen through a funhouse mirror instead of a rearview one.

Released the same year, set in the same neon Vegas, this is the trashy funhouse-mirror version of the American dream Casino tells with tragic weight.

But It's gleefully bad on purpose — camp, not craft — and if you want prestige filmmaking this will feel like a betrayal.

Cocaine Cowboys2006

Same structural story — an underground economy that briefly runs like clockwork before violence and greed tear it apart — but nonfiction, with the real faces behind the myth.

A documentary about Miami's cocaine boom, told through the real people who built and lost fortunes — the same rise, excess, and collapse, but true.

But No De Niro, no Scorsese sheen — talking heads and archival footage instead of tracking shots, which some will find less thrilling.