With a pounding soundtrack, flashing lights, and immersive atmosphere, casinos are designed to thrill. But underneath the surface, they’re rigged and meant to bleed you of your money. For years, mathematically inclined minds have tried to turn the tables by using their expertise to exploit the weaknesses in the rigged system. But they haven’t been successful — until Casino.

After the massive success of Goodfellas, Universal gave Martin Scorsese the green light to direct Casino. With De Niro and Joe Pesci returning as the mob duo, it was the perfect follow up to a film that already had people talking about “the next generation of Mafia movies.”

The movie is a true gangster epic, and it’s set in Sin City — a civic portrait scribbled in neon in the shape of a rigged wheel. One of the film’s most memorable sequences (shot with a deliberate nod to Goodfellas’ Copacabana interlude) takes us into the Tangiers casino money counting room, where skimming off the till is an art form that Ace countenances only as long as the kickbacks go to his old-school bosses in Kansas City.

While much of the story focuses on the machinations of mafia life, the film is also about Vegas and how its mega-gambling corporations have slowly taken over. It’s a tale of epic scope, and it’s told with the same energy, pacing, and attention to detail that Scorsese is known for. From the quotidian details (Ace ordering his cooks to put “exactly the same amount of blueberries in every muffin”) to the big dramatic moments (Lester hustling Ginger on her wedding night), Casino is a relentlessly entertaining film.