Like The Godfather, it makes us feel like eavesdroppers in a secret place. The movie opens with a car bombing, and the figure of Sam «Ace» Rothstein floating through the air. The movie explains how such a thing came to happen to him. The first hour plays like a documentary; there’s a narration, by Rothstein (Robert De Niro) and others, explaining how the mob skimmed millions out of the casinos.

It’s an interesting process. Assuming you could steal 25 percent of the slot-machine take – what would you do with tons of coins? How would you convert them into bills that could be stuffed into the weekly suitcase for delivery to the mob in Kansas City? Casino knows. It also knows how to skim from the other games, and from food service and the gift shops. And it knows about how casinos don’t like to be stolen from.

– Roger Ebert ^[1]