Casino MPAA Rating: R Entertainment: +2 Content: -4

Hollywood's fascination with the sordid side of glittering, glamorous Las Vegas continues in CASINO. Robert De Niro as casino manager, Sam Ace Rothstein, can spot a cheating gambler two tables away. Gambling has always been his passion, but since the mob appointed him manager of the Tangiers Casino, Ace has become obsessed with running the club. Old friend and fellow mobster, Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci), becomes his security man. A jovial family man, Nicky nevertheless has a cruel side that delights in beating cheating customers to death. When Ace meets the beautiful Ginger (Sharon Stone), a hooker and hustler, his cold heart melts. Based on his promises of great wealth, she agrees to marry him. But she can't stay off drugs and booze, and as the marriage disintegrates, federal agents begin investigating mob activities. Ace's paradise becomes a living hell. Audiences are subjected to three hours of a film that could be titled Everything You Didn't Want to Know about Organized Crime.

CASINO is a disgusting, graphic expos of how greed destroys. Greed motivates everyone from the gambling tourists to the ruthless mobsters. The more money made, the more blood shed. Ginger wants Ace killed so she can get to two million dollars in the bank. The mob's lack of respect for life as they perform hideous acts of torture on defenseless victims is unbearable to watch. One man is beaten to a bloody pulp, then his head placed in a vise that's tightened until his eye pops out. Another is shocked with a cattle prod; others' hands are smashed with a hammer and two are beaten and buried alive. Countless point-blank shootings occur as casually as a handshake. Incessant filthy dialogue and profanities assault viewers' ears. This reviewer stopped counting after hearing 245 f-words two-thirds of the way through the film. Ginger has an adulterous affair with Ace's friend Nicky, and they are shown having sex once, briefly without nudity. It's hard to imagine anyone paying to watch a bloody slaughter and to listen to over 300 obscenities and profanities.

Preview Reviewer: Mary Draughon
Distributor: Universal Pictures, 100 Universal City Plaza, Universal City, CA 91608