From Casino Royale to Casino Jack: Great Films With ‘Casino’ in the Title

For online casino players, there are loads of great films with ‘casino’ in the title – Casino Royale is the obvious choice, but have you heard about Casino1995 or Casino 1980, same name, different storyline? No? Or even The Casino Murder Case, Casino Raiders, Casino Raiders II and The Casino, a 1972 Hong Kong drama by Cheung Chang Chak. Top films with ‘Casino’ in the name create an air of excitement even before the credits roll.

Movies about a casino, in general, invoke the same feeling of intrigue, especially when they are called – The City of Chance (about Las Vegas in 1940) or Croupier, a 1998 British crime noir drama thriller movie about, unsurprisingly, a croupier. 

There are also plenty of casino-based movies that don’t have any related words in the title but are nevertheless set in a gaming environment. Take The Hangover, for example; the story is based in Las Vegas and is about three friends who wake up from a bachelor party with no memory of the previous night. The Hangover is full of jolly japes and seriously bad language but doesn’t really show the joys of Vegas in a good light.

Here are our favourite movies with ‘casino’ in the title that are worth a view.

Casino Raiders 

Casino Raiders is set in Hong Kong in the late 80s (1989). An action-packed movie from a period in the late ‘80s and ‘90s when gambling and crime films were dominating the Hong Kong movie scene. Casino Raiders was followed by two sequels, No Risk, No Gain (1990) and Casino Raiders II (1991), which are unrelated plots but nevertheless casino-related stories, especially Casino Raiders II, for obvious reasons.

Casino Jack

Casino Jack, also called Bagman, is a biographical crime drama made in 2010 directed by George Hickenlooper. The movie focuses on the career of Jack Abramoff, a lobbyist and businessman convicted of corruption, fraud, conspiracy, and tax evasion in 2006. 

Abramoff served just over three years of a six-year sentence in federal prison and was assigned to a halfway house to which he was released in December 2010. Critics back at the time said, ‘While the actors turn in a strong performance, Casino Jack is a disappointingly uneven fictionalised account of a true story.’

Jack Abramoff’s story doesn’t end there (although the movie ends in the halfway house in 2010); the real Jack goes back to prison in 2020 for some skullduggery involving cryptocurrency, so watch this space for Casino Jack II – or not! 

This leaves us with The Casino Murder Case and Croupier…

The Casino Murder 

The Casino Murder Case is a black and white mystery movie made in 1935 starring some talented actors of the era. Created from a screenplay by Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf and directed by Edwin L. Marin, the movie is based on a novel written by S. S. Van Dine in 1934, which has the same name.

The film is typical of the 30s and is set around a murder plot in a casino (surprise, surprise). The Casino Murder is a romp through Chicago and is complete with interesting early-day casino footage.

Croupier

This casino based movie attracted a cult following in North America and launched the actor’s careers by using interior monologues in the style of many early detective films in a noir style, such as The Third Man  and The Long Night 

The plot follows Jack Manfred, an aspiring but unsuccessful writer who is broke and makes ends meet by taking a job as a croupier at a local casino. Jack finds himself drawn into casino life as the job takes over his life. The story follows Jack through many attempts to leave this world, which he finds fascinating and appalling at the same time.

The film was made in 1998, the same year as Rounders. Rounders is a film about two friends who try to win at high-stakes poker to pay off a massive debt. A rounder is a person who travels from city to city looking for high-stakes poker games.

Rounders was moderately successful and became a cult film following a US poker boom in the early 2000s.

One last thought about the films with Casino in the title – why are at least two of the main characters in the movies listed above called Jack? Answers on a postcard, please!