The movies have long had a love affair with the casino and it’s not too hard to see why.
For a start, casinos are inherently exciting and glamorous environments. Places that are full of high rollers risking everything on the roll of a dice, the spin of a wheel or the turn of a card. Plus all the action is taking place in a sumptuously decorated set with red and gold in abundance that looks just brilliant on the big screen.
Casino scenes often also contain one of the key elements for any drama, namely conflict. The main protagonist may find themselves directly competing with their nemesis. Alternatively, they can find themselves battling against the odds to prevail simply in the casino game that they’re playing.
The three scenes that we’ve chosen show just how effective a backdrop to the action the casino environment can be. Some could even help you in playing your favourite online casino games and, if you look deeply enough into the action and its subtext, there are some life lessons to be extracted from them too.
Run Lola Run
This 1998 German film has become something of a cult classic due to the way that it presents the same story in three different ways. The core of the plot is that Lola’s boyfriend has lost a bag containing 100,000 marks belonging to a crime boss. In three episodes it shows Lola trying to replace the money in various different ways.
In the first she agrees to try to rob a supermarket with her boyfriend to get the money. But things go wrong and they are surrounded by the police. In the second running of the narrative she visits the bank where her father works, grabs a security guard’s gun and demands the 100,000 marks or she’ll shoot her father. This also ends badly for our heroine.
In the final one she enters a casino with just a 100 marks as a stake. She puts it all on 20 in a game of roulette and wins 3.500 marks. To the disbelief of all around her she does this twice more and wins each time. The money her boyfriend has lost is won and it’s the only one of the three versions of events shown that has a happy ending.
The life lesson? That when you’re in a casino, whatever you’re playing, make sure that you’re doing it with conviction.
Casino Royale
We couldn’t have a list of great casino scenes without at least one Bond movie featuring in the mix. And where better to start than with the movie that breathed a whole new lease of life into the franchise with the explosive arrival of Daniel Craig?
It wasn’t just the far more graphic violence of the new Bond movie that startled viewers and critics alike. There was on very long and drawn out scene in a casino in Montenegro that was one of the most gripping ever seen featuring 007.
In it, the set-up is that Bond, in disguise, is to play in a high stakes poker game using $10 million of the government’s money. His opponent is the evil Le Chiffre, a talented poker player but also not beyond a little cheating.
Initially, Bond loses the $10 million but manages to get another $5 million to play with courtesy of his friend in the CIA, Felix Leiter who’s also in the game. This is when Le Chiffre’s girlfriend poison’s Bond’s Martini which then leads to his cardiac arrest. Fortunately, his Aston Martin is fitted with a defibrillator as an optional extra which saves the day – and he goes on to win the poker game with a royal flush.
In this case, we can’t all be like Bond, but in life we certainly can try to brush aside all obstacles in our way.
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Our last example is loosely based on a true story of a group of Harvard students, led by their professor, who tried to use card-counting at blackjack to tip their odds in their favour.
The main character, Ben Campbell, is recruited as a promising member of the team thanks to his great ability in maths. In a series of scenes we see big money being won, despite suspicious casino security guards looking on.
But Ben is not as focused as he should be and on one trip to the casino he allows himself to be distracted. This means that he misses crucial signals from other members of the gang, leading to a failure to collect $200,000 in winnings.
This sets in motion a whole series of events leaving us in doubt as to how it’s all going to end for Ben. The lesson here is quite a simple one – concentrate or prepare to face the consequences!
