You walk into a casino with a wallet full of cash and the intention to enjoy a night of enjoyable gaming and maybe a couple rounds of drinks. Hours later, you’re left wondering what happened to your money. This is what casinos do to people — they use sounds, lights and physical design to make you lose track of time. They also employ people like mathematicians and computer programmers to help them calculate house edges and variance (the probability of a winning streak).

The casino’s atmosphere is intoxicating, with blaring music and clinking coins. There is a sense of excitement as people mix and mingle, trying their luck at games ranging from poker to roulette. When someone wins, cheers erupt. This creates a false sense of possibility, leading other players to believe they can beat the odds by simply rolling the dice or spinning the wheel.

This is the setting for Martin Scorsese’s Casino, a movie that both builds on and inverts the teeming energy of Basic Instinct and, more specifically, Goodfellas, which it helped usher into popular culture. The film lays bare the intricate web of corruption that was centered in Vegas, with tendrils reaching out to politicians, Teamsters unions and even the Midwest mafia based in Kansas City. It also stars two of Goodfellas’ goodfellas – De Niro and Joe Pesci — completing a trilogy of mob movies that Scorsese began with Raging Bull. It also features some of the most graphic scenes of violence ever put to film, though this is not merely for shock value.