In a world that feels increasingly isolating, where virtual connection often replaces face to face interaction, casinos provide a place for people from all walks of life to gather and share the experience. They are a form of community that is fueled by generosity. And though they may not be the best place to spend your hard-earned money, that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy yourself while you are there.

While Casino lacks the pizzazz of a film like Goodfellas, it does provide an epic history lesson about Vegas and how it reinvented itself. It explains how the mafia was pushed out of the city by massive gambling corporations and how that transformed it into what we know today as the desert metropolis.

It is also a showcase for Scorsese’s skill at directing. He uses voiceovers and documentarian-style filming to reveal exposition. He has a knack for using music to set the tone of his scenes as well. Moreover, his editing is slick and taut. Despite its three hour running time, the film never loses steam and remains a lean thriller till the very end.

Although there are seedy backroom gambling parlors in every town, casinos are a sophisticated and lawful business that employ security guards and monitor their parking lots to protect their patrons. And while crime still happens around casinos, it’s a tiny fraction of the overall criminal activity in the country. It’s more a result of a broken society than the casinos themselves.