Plot

In Las Vegas, two best friends--a casino executive and a Mafia enforcer--compete for a gambling empire and a fast-living, fast-loving socialite.

This Martin Scorsese film depicts the Janus-like quality of Las Vegas: it has a glittering, glamorous face, as well as a brutal, cruel one. Ace Rothstein and Nicky Santoro, mobsters who move to Las Vegas to make their mark, live and work in this paradoxical world. Seen through their eyes, each as a foil to the other, the details of mob involvement in the casinos of the 1970s and '80s are revealed. Ace is the smooth operator of the Tangiers casino, while Nicky is his boyhood friend and tough strongman, robbing and shaking down the locals. However, they each have a tragic flaw: Ace falls in love with hustler Ginger, and Nicky falls into an ever-deepening spiral of drugs and violence.—Tad Dibbern <DIBBERN_D@a1.mscf.upenn.edu>

In 1975, bookie and expert handicapper Sam Rothstein--Ace to his friends--goes somewhat legitimate when the Chicago-based Italian Mafia hires him to run the Tangiers Casino on the Las Vegas Strip. Ace can do the job, applying for his gaming license despite his past, while having his ever-changing job title be anything but running the casino and the actual license getting lost in the never-ending process. Ace's best friend from childhood, Nicky Santoro, eventually comes along for the ride, he who the Mafia hires to be Ace and the organization's unofficial protector. Ace is able to make a success of the casino, which includes the process of the Mafia bosses being able to skim profits off the top, while making the entire business look legitimate to the authorities. Ace's success is placed into jeopardy by Nicky, not only by his reckless, violent, volatile, and ruthless behavior, but also by his want to eke out his own gangster fiefdom in Las Vegas. It is also placed into jeopardy by Ace's wife, Ginger McKenna, whom he knew was a hustler when he married her and whom he wants to trust in every aspect of the word in his love for her. She ends up being a self-destructive woman, her primary weakness being in wanting to help a friend, loser hanger-on Lester Diamond.—Huggo

In early-1970s Las Vegas, low-level mobster Sam "Ace" Rothstein (Robert De Niro) gets tapped by his bosses to head the Tangiers Casino. At first, he's a great success in the job, but over the years, problems with his loose-cannon enforcer Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci), his ex-hustler wife Ginger (Sharon Stone), her con-artist ex Lester Diamond (James Woods) and a handful of corrupt politicians put Sam in ever-increasing danger. Martin Scorsese directs this adaptation of Nicholas Pileggi's book.—FilmsNow

Sam "Ace" Rothstein, a mob-connected casino operator in Las Vegas, attempts a civilized lifestyle with his money-conditional wife Ginger. Nicky Santoro, a boyhood friend of Ace and now a Made Man of the Mafia, arrives in town with an ambitious agenda of his own that soon disrupts Ace's life.—Brian Whiting <bwhiting@holly.colostate.edu>

In 1973, sports handicapper and Mafia associate Sam "Ace" Rothstein (Robert De Niro) is sent to Las Vegas to run the Teamsters-funded Tangiers Casino on behalf of several Midwest mob families with frontman Philip Green (Kevin Pollak). Taking advantage of lax gaming laws allowing him to work at the casino while his gaming license is still pending, Sam becomes practically the Tangiers' boss and doubles the casino's profits, with the extra unaccounted-for cash skimmed directly from the casino count room and delivered to the Midwest Mafia bosses, before the records are reported to income tax agencies.

Impressed with Sam's work, Chicago boss Remo Gaggi (Pasquale Cajano) sends Sam's childhood friend and mob enforcer Nicholas "Nicky" Santoro (Joe Pesci) and his crew to protect Sam and the whole business. Nicky, however, begins to become more of a liability than an asset. His violent temper quickly gets him banned by the gaming board from every casino, and his name is placed in the black book.

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.

Sam, meanwhile, meets and falls in love with a hustler, Ginger McKenna (Sharon Stone). Despite Ginger's reluctance, they soon conceive a daughter, Amy, and marry. Sam entrusts Ginger with $2 million in cash and $1 million in jewelry. Their relationship begins to deteriorate when Sam and Nicky catch Ginger giving money to her former boyfriend, a con man named Lester Diamond (James Woods). Sam has Nicky's crew beat Lester when they catch him accepting $25,000 of Sam's money from her.

In 1976, Sam also makes an enemy in Clark County Commissioner Pat Webb (L. Q. Jones) by firing Webb's brother-in-law Donald Ward (Joe Bob Briggs) from the casino for incompetence.

Sam refuses to reinstate Ward, despite pressure from Webb to do so. Webb retaliates by pulling Sam's casino license application from the backlog, forcing Sam to have a license hearing, while secretly arranging for the gaming board and State Senator Harrison Roberts (Dick Smothers) to reject the license. Sam responds by appearing on television and openly accuses the city government of corruption. The bosses, unappreciative of Sam's publicity, ask him to return home, but he stubbornly blames Nicky's reckless lawbreaking for his own problems. Sam's attempts to get Nicky to leave Las Vegas only further strain their friendship. In a heated argument in the desert, Nicky chastises Sam to never "go over his head" again.

When the Midwest bosses discover that people on the inside are stealing from their skim, they appoint incompetent Kansas City under-boss Artie Piscano (Vinny Vella) to oversee the skim and reduce the amount local mobsters are keeping for themselves. Disobeying orders, Piscano keeps detailed written records of 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.

In 1980, Sam almost loses patience with Ginger after she and Lester are in Los Angeles with plans to run away to Europe with his daughter Amy. Sam talks Ginger into bringing Amy back, then overhears her planning on the phone to kill him. Coupled with Ginger's alcoholism and cocaine addiction, Sam is so angry that he kicks her out of the house. He later relents and forgives Ginger. She returns, on Sam's condition that she carry a beeper on her for Sam to contact her whenever he must.

Ginger turns to Nicky for help in getting her share of her and Sam's money from the bank, and they begin an affair, which according to mob rules could get the two of them killed. Sam soon discovers their affair, as do private investigators. Sam reaches his limit with Ginger when she ties Amy to her bedposts to have a night with Nicky. Sam confronts Ginger in the restaurant and disowns her. She turns to Nicky, but he has washed his hands of her as well. Nicky ends his affair with Ginger once she asks him to kill Sam and threatens to go to the FBI.

The next morning, Ginger goes to Sam's house, creates a domestic disturbance, and uses the distraction to take the key to their bank deposit box. She takes some of the savings but is then arrested by FBI agents.

In 1982, with Ginger's arrest and the FBI's discovery of Piscano's records, which are then matched with the skimming operation, the casino empire crumbles, and the bosses are arrested. The FBI approaches Sam for help by showing him photos of Nicky and Ginger together, but he turns them down. During a meeting, the mob bosses decide to eliminate anyone involved in order to keep them from testifying, including the head of the teamsters, the money courier and several casino executives.

In 1983, Ginger, whose personal fortune was squandered by lowlife associates, dies of a hot dose in Los Angeles. That same year, Sam narrowly survives a car bomb, suspecting Nicky to be the culprit. Sam states that the bosses did not authorize the bombing because they had "other ideas" for him.

Before Sam can confront him, however, Nicky and his brother Dominick (Philip Suriano) are murdered by Nicky's former associates, Frankie Marino (Frank Vincent). Sam narrates that the bosses, finally fed up with Nicky's recklessness and attempt on Sam's life, order Frankie and his crew to kill Nicky and Dominick. Invited to attend a meet-up 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.

With the mob now out of power, the old casinos are purchased by big corporations and demolished to make way for gaudier gambling attractions financed by junk bonds. Sam laments that this new "family friendly" Las Vegas lacks the same kind of catering to the players as the older and, to his perception, classier Vegas he saw when he ran the Tangiers. Because of his status as a reliable and high earner for the outfit, Sam is allowed to live, moving to San Diego and returning to sports handicapping; "right back where I started," as Sam puts it before asking, "Why mess up a good thing? And that's that."