In this list of memorable movie moments, there are card counts, lush robberies and poker games with the highest bets you can imagine.
Here we relive some of the best scenes about big bets seen on the screen.
10. “Perhaps they would feel more comfortable at one of our tables with lower bets.”
Movie: Swingers
Year: 1996
Who: Jon Favreau, Vince Vaughn
The mixture of the past and present of Las Vegas appears in a very crude way in this story of Trent (Vaughn) and Mike (Favreau), two aspiring actors who travel to Sin City with their best costumes to experience Las Vegas to the fullest. But instead there are retired old women and a free drinks.
Motivated to be one of those who bet big, they sit at the wrong blackjack table and in a blink of an eye they lose in one hand the 300 dollars they had to bet. “Won’t they have something smaller?”
9. “Aaaaarrrrrggggghhhhhh!”
Movie: Run Lola, Run
Year: 1998
Who: Franka Potente
A money transfer goes to waste, and Lola (Powerful) has 20 minutes to find 100,000 marks and give them to a gang of thugs if she doesn’t want to lose her boyfriend forever.
After spending most of her time in a delirious race, Lola takes time to enter the Berlin casino and try her fortune on roulette.
The squeak that Lola lets out, capable of popping the champagne glasses, while the roulette spins until it stops is the final touch of this scene.
8. “Rain Man, let’s play cards.”
Movie: Rain Man
Year: 1988
Who: Tom Cruise, Dustin Hoffman
Hoffman won an Oscar for Rain Man, who also got the statuette for the Best Film of 1988, by playing a gifted autistic who his brother Charlie (Cruise) takes on a trip.
Charlie desperately needs money to save his roaring car sales business, so they both go to a casino in Nevada to take a game of blackjack.
This scene had its nice tribute at Resacón in Las Vegas, when Zach Galifianakis uses his “incredible” ability with numbers to count cards.
7. “There are 115 million in the boat …”
Movie: Casino Royale
Year: 2005
Who: Daniel Craig, Mads Mikkelsen
Every new Bond movie has to have its own casino scene and, in its first incarnation of 007, Craig’s at Casino Royale is one of the best.
Texas Hold’em replaces the baccarat game that appears in the book when the secret agent confronts Le Chiffre, an international arms dealer, in a game with a large blind of $ 1 million.
In what is the final game, with big bets, Bond has to survive a poisoning and a heart attack before overcoming his rivals. No one like him to get it.
6. “You can leave with the money and a hammer or leave as you have come. You cannot have both.”
Movie: Casino
Year: 1995
Who: Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci
Martin Scorsese may not have lived up to One of ours when he brought together the duo formed by Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci in this (more or less) true story about the head of a casino in Las Vegas in the 70s.
There is too much voiceover and it is too violent, but we cannot deny its glamor, its brightness and its elegant costumes.
Everyone can choose a favorite phrase from the hundreds of scenes, although one of the best is that of the punishment to which two casino scammers are subjected.
You will never see a radio in the same way again.
5. “We cannot continue accepting bets until we recover.”
Movie: Ocean’s Thirteen
Year: 2007
Who: Al Pacino, Ellen Barkin, George Clooney
The Ocean trilogy came to an end in 2007 with another star-filled adventure in a new Las Vegas casino.
The film’s script is signed by David Levien and Brian Koppelman (who also wrote other films about poker like Rounders or Runner Runner ) and reunites Danny Ocean with his band of thieves.
The plot limps a bit, and there are too many stars trying to get noticed, but the simulated earthquake in the casino is not bad.
4. “We cannot continue together, with suspicious minds.”
Movie: Blade Runner 2049
Year: 2017
Who: Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford
If you’ve ever played Fallout video games, you may imagine Las Vegas as a violent and futuristic place inhabited by thieves and insane soldiers.
But you can also see the City of Sin as a post-apocalyptic desert in this evocative second part of Blade Runner released in 2017.
The protagonist of the original film, Deckard (Ford) is in a Nevada club that, like Deckard himself, has lived better days.
The Gosling Replicator has been sent to bring it back; when the scene with a shootout happens in the cabaret of an old casino while a defective hologram of Elvis marks a few classics loudly.
3. “Bond. James Bond.”
Movie: Agent 007 against Dr. No
Year: 1962
Who: Sean Connery
It is most appropriate that the introduction of the first film of agent 007 of Ian Fleming takes place at a casino table.
That was the natural habitat of British spy James Bond, usually accompanied by a Martini vodka in one hand and a model in the other.
As with most Bond novels, Agent 007 plays (and sweeps) baccarat.
2. “Let’s make a fortune.”
Movie: 21: Blackjack
Year: 2008
Who: Kevin Spacey, Kate Bosworth, Jim Sturgess
21: Blackjack is based on the excellent book by Ben Mezrich Bringing Down the House.
It focuses on the true story of a group of MIT students who end up becoming the most effective blackjack card counting team in the world.
Although casino retaliation is a bit sweetened in the movie version, it is also true that it has good scenes when students try to leave with their millions.
1. “You can lose 80 million in secret or lose 160 million publicly. You decide.”
Movie: Ocean’s Eleven
Year: 2001
Who: Matt Damon, George Clooney
What is possibly the best Hollywood casino scene precisely does not occur in a casino room.
As a remake full of stars from the 60s Rat Pack, this Steven Soderbergh thriller features Brad Pitt and George Clooney. They are two scammers who plan to win the 160 million dollars accumulated by three Las Vegas casinos.
When the protagonists are about to explode the vault that joins the MGM Grand, the Bellagio and The Mirage, the tension subsides as Clooney realizes that he has forgotten to change the batteries to the detonator.