Ace and Santoro are like gods, they find themselves in a situation where they have monumental power, but, as with all Greek gods, they have fatal flaws.
The film may be based on true events, but the story reads like a tale adapted from Greek mythology. However, when childhood friend, the psychopathic Nicky Santoro turns up with his own very different agenda, it's only a matter of time before cracks in their glitzy empire start to show. He is a businessman who wishes to lead as legitimate a business as possible. Robert De Niro plays Sam 'Ace' Rothstein, a professional gambler selected by the mob to run the biggest casino in town. Based in Las Vegas in the Seventies, the original Sin City, we are now presented with the hierarchy of the underworld, the absolute top of the tree. And the third in this unofficial trilogy is Casino.
In Goodfellas, he showed us the ups and the downs of gangster life for those that climb the ladder a few rungs then, of course, hit every rung on the way back down. With Mean Streets, he followed the lives of small-time hoods in Little Italy. Martin Scorsese understands gangsters better than anyone.
