Las Vegas is made for the film industry.
The mix of bright lights and high thrills set against the back drop of mafia-involvement and dark stirrings make the city one of the top locations for TV and Film. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, which has spawned a number of top shows with the same name, drew on this really well, using Sin city as a great backdrop to the tense crime thriller show.
Las Vegas appears in films as a backdrop in some absolutely great movies. We run down the top films set in Las Vegas.
Ocean’s Eleven, 1960
The original Ocean’s Eleven featured the Rat Pack, with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop playing a hardcore group of high class criminal who drank as hard as the y masterminded one of the greatest heists in cinema history. The film was made during the daytime, and on a night, these singers and actors would go out and live it up in real life, meaning the film was made while all the cast were hungover.
It’s a great opportunity to see the Vegas of old, with the old Riviera and Sahara hotels in the background. The remake, with George Clooney, takes it up a notch in a high action thriller, but you really should see the original to capture a feel for Las Vegas in the swinging Sixties. If you can’t afford to get to Vegas yourself get to the best online casino uk at Royal Vegas and have your own Sin City experience from home.
Casino, 1995
One of director Martin Scorsese’s best films, Casino shows you the dark side of the Las Vegas and American dream. De Niro plays a shady mafia associate sent to Vega to run a Casino. The film is a highly stylish look at 1970’s Vegas, where the Mafia were heavily involved with some of the biggest casinos on the Strip.
The Hangover, 2009
For a contemporary look at life in Vegas, look no further than recent blockbuster The Hangover. Taking the maxim ‘what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas’ to its ultimate conclusion, the film stars Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis and Justin Bartha as a group of bachelors who go out on a crazed adventure on a stag weekend, only to wake up the next day with no ideas where the groom is or how to find him. With guest stars including a tiger and Mike Tyson, the film funny and poignant. Well worth a watch.