A casino is a gambling establishment that offers various games of chance to its patrons. While casinos often add luxuries such as restaurants, free drinks, stage shows, and dramatic scenery to help attract customers, their primary goal is to encourage gamblers to play for longer periods of time and take larger risks. During this process, players earn comps, or complimentary services such as hotel rooms, meals, tickets to shows, and even limo and airline service for large spenders.

Despite their lucrative profits, casinos are not without risk. Something about them seems to inspire cheating, stealing, and scamming amongst their patrons, who are desperate to win big. In order to minimize these dangers, casinos are outfitted with elaborate surveillance systems that can monitor every table, change window, and doorway at once. Observant personnel can also adjust the cameras to focus on suspicious behavior.

Casino is Martin Scorsese’s most violent movie, and there are certainly plenty of scenes that would be shocking to most people. The torture of a man with a vice, the attempted murder of De Niro’s character, and Joe Pesci’s death by overdose are all realistic and terrifying, but Scorsese did not use violence for style or shock value; rather, he was faithfully portraying the reality of casino life.