Poster © Universal Pictures. Shown at reduced size for review and commentary.
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GenreCrime & Drama
RatedR
Runtime2 hr 58 mins
ReleasedNovember 22, 1995
StreamingSee Where to Watch
DirectorMartin Scorsese
StarringRobert De Niro, Sharon Stone, Joe Pesci
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Casino (1995)
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| iIMDb Profile | %Rotten Tomatoes |
| WWikipedia | LLetterboxd |
| TTMDB | +Add to Top 8 |
| Casino's Details | |
| Genre | Crime & Drama |
| Rated | R |
| Released | 11/14/1995 (New York premiere); 11/22/1995 (United States); 03/13/1996 (France) |
| Streaming | See Where to Watch on this page. |
| Running Time | 2 hr 58 mins |
| Budget | $40–50M (reported) |
| Box Office | Updated daily from Box Office Mojo. See the numbers below. |
| Based On | Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas by Nicholas Pileggi |
| Country | United States, France |
| Language | English |
| Casino's Interests | |
| General | Counting rooms, blueberry muffins, the eye in the sky, neon signs, very loud sport coats. |
| Music | No original score. Wall-to-wall oldies, plus a little Bach. |
| Movies | Goodfellas (1990). Same director, same De Niro and Pesci, different city. |
| Television | Las Vegas. The NBC version, way more cheerful about the casino business. |
| Heroes | Ace Rothstein. Runs a casino like a Swiss watch. Muffins included. |
| Casino's Crew | |
| Director | Martin Scorsese |
| Writers | Nicholas Pileggi, Martin Scorsese |
| Producers | Barbara De Fina |
| Cinematography | Robert Richardson |
| Edited By | Thelma Schoonmaker |
| Production | Universal Pictures, Syalis D.A., Légende Entreprises, De Fina/Cappa |
| Distributed By | Universal Pictures |
Take Goodfellas, give it a nicer jacket, stretch it to three hours and hand the narration to two guys who won’t let you leave the dinner table. That’s Casino. De Niro explains, Pesci explains, then De Niro explains what Pesci just explained. And still, it’s hard to look away. Ace runs the Tangiers like a math teacher with a pinky ring, counting the blueberries in the muffins while the whole operation rots around him. Sharon Stone is the best thing in it, all charm and chaos, and her performance gets wilder and sadder as it goes. Joe Pesci plays Nicky like a lit match in a room full of paper. 79% with critics, $116.1 million worldwide, and a B minus from opening night crowds, which tracks for a movie this long and this cold. A 7.6 because the craft is unreal, but that’s a lot of runtime to spend with people you never really like. $294 says you count the blueberries in your next muffin and feel weird about it.
What works: Sharon Stone gives the performance of her career, and Scorsese makes the money side of a casino weirdly thrilling.
What doesn’t: At 178 minutes of nonstop voiceover, it keeps telling you what’s happening instead of letting it play, and it retreads a lot of Goodfellas.
Who it’s for: Grown-up crime fans who love the how-it-works side of mob movies more than the shootouts.
Spoilers
The bosses finally get rid of Nicky, Ginger dies alone in Los Angeles, and the car bomb from the opening turns out to be one Ace survived. The old mob loses Las Vegas to big corporations, and Ace ends up right back where he started, handicapping games.
Las Vegas in the 1970s. Sam "Ace" Rothstein (Robert De Niro) is a sports handicapper so good that the mob bosses back in the Midwest hand him the Tangiers casino to run, quietly, with nobody's real names on the paperwork. Ace turns the place into a money machine. Then his childhood friend Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci) gets sent out to look after things and starts making his own trouble all over town. And Ace falls hard for Ginger McKenna (Sharon Stone), the sharpest hustler on the casino floor. Martin Scorsese directs. One hundred seventy-eight minutes, every chip counted.
Anyone who wants to know how a casino really works. Smile for the eye in the sky.
| Robert De Niro | Sam "Ace" Rothstein |
| Sharon Stone | Ginger McKenna |
| Joe Pesci | Nicky Santoro |
| James Woods | Lester Diamond |
| Don Rickles | Billy Sherbert |
| Alan King | Andy Stone |
| Kevin Pollak | Phillip Green |
| L. Q. Jones | Pat Webb |
| Dick Smothers | Senator Harrison Roberts |
| Frank Vincent | Frank Marino |
| John Bloom | Don Ward |
| Pasquale Cajano | Remo Gaggi |
| Melissa Prophet | Jennifer Santoro |
| Bill Allison | John Nance |
| Vinny Vella | Artie Piscano |
| Oscar Goodman | himself |
| Catherine Scorsese | Piscano's Mother |
| Philip Suriano | Dominick Santoro |
| Erika Von Tagen | Older Amy |
| Richard Riehle | Charlie Clark |
| Frankie Avalon | himself |
| Steve Allen | himself |
| Jayne Meadows | herself |
| Jerry Vale | himself |
- (cur | prev) 14:30, 17 October 2026 DataBot +480 Numbers refreshed: Worldwide box office $116.1M; Domestic box office $42.5M; Opening weekend $9.9M; Profit / loss (est.) -$9.4M; Rotten Tomatoes 79%; CinemaScore B−; box office chart updated; RT 79% (77 reviews); Metacritic 73 / 100; CinemaScore B−; IMDb users 8.2 / 10 (629,964 votes); movie.guru score 7.1.
- (cur | prev) 12:00, 17 October 2026 DataBot +2,000 Profile created from Wikipedia and Box Office Mojo: cast, crew, release dates, budget, official trailer.