With its mythical status, Non GamStop casinos lent themselves to many films. Just think of the spectacular crash of 'Con Air' at The Sands, the escalating bachelorette party of 'The Hangover' and the neon-lit sadness of Mike Figgis' 'Leaving Las Vegas'. And long before George Clooney, Frank Sinatra and his original 'Ocean's Eleven' planned a full-scale ram raid on the mighty casinos of the seductive desert city.
But also outside the famous Strip, filmmakers are inspired by virtual spinning roulettes, online ringing slot machines, stacked poker chips at non GamStop casinos and other gambling entertainment. From the old-fashioned '5 Card Stud' in the New Orleans of the Great Depression ('The Cincinnati Kid'), the rampant mafia heyday of Martin Scorsese's 'Casino' to clandestine poker games in dingy New York and London backrooms ('Rounders', 'Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels'), the high stakes duel between James Bond and Le Chiffre in 'Casino Royale' or the debt tragedy of 'Uncut Gems'.
Looking for unforgettable movies about non GamStop casinos, poker and other nerve-wracking gambling, illegal or not? Then the jackpot will ring below!
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21 (2008)
“The house always wins”, casino wisdom that the ' MIT Blackjack Team ' couldn't care less about. Between 1979 and 1994, these brilliant students and alumni of prestigious American universities such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard made millions of dollars lighter with blackjack at many renowned gambling houses.
In 2003, author Ben Mezrich chronicled this fascinating history in his New York Times bestselling book Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions. The story of the sophisticated university card counting tricks also sounded like ringing slot machines to director Robert Luketic.
Luketic's film adaptation '21' (2008) received considerable criticism for its 'whitewashing' and creative melodrama. For example, the Englishman Jim Sturgess, with the help of a dialect coach, played the American main character Ben Campbell, who in turn had to represent the actual Chinese-American MIT mastermind Jeff Ma. The real Ma did act as an advisor and has an amusing cameo as a blackjack dealer at the Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino. Aaron Yoo and Liza Lapira, the only Asian-American actors who were actually drummed up, got glorified, flattened bit parts.
Conversely, of course, there was room for the obligatory wafer-thin love story with Kate Bosworth serving as the desirable gaming table decoration. For the then still fashionable Kevin Spacey, the screenwriters penned the completely fictional role of Micky Rosa, the cold-blooded professor who teaches 6 promising students the tricks of the better blackjack scam. The casting of Laurence Fishburne as a heavy-handed casino watchdog can only be applauded.
Despite these dubious creative adaptations, '21' became one of the blockbusters of 2008. The $35 million film easily racked up four times its production budget.
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Rounders (1998)
There were no non GamStop casinos in the embryonic dial-up internet era of the 1990s, but poker was hardly as ubiquitous as it is today. The deck still smelled of anonymous smoky New York backrooms, sticky poker chips, and the beading sweat of overconfident rookies.
John Dahl was ahead of his time with 'Rounders' (1998). Dahl's entertaining poker print left the halls almost as silently as he entered. In the years that followed, 'Rounders' grew into a cult film of stature in the poker world and far beyond. For many professional poker players, it even became their first introduction to the card game. Vanessa Rousso even touts it as the best poker movie ever! Incidentally, 'A rounder' is someone who earns his living playing cards.
After 'Good Will Hunting' (1997), Matt Damon once again plays the bright guy with bad friends. After his buddy Worm (Edward Norton as a cunning cheater) walks out on a $15,000 debt, law student Mike (Damon) is forced to return to the poker table. Mike's friend Jo (Gretchen Moll) can't help but laugh at that. But sneaky friends don't let you down, right? Moreover, the desirable Petra (Famke Janssen) beckons among the card-playing gangster scum of the Chesterfield Club.
Of course, Worm's guilt only increases in the meantime. A confrontation with the biggest blackjack of the clandestine high stakes poker world becomes inevitable. An Oreo cookie gobbling John Malkovich naturally steals the show with his fat Russian accent as Mike's gaming table nemesis Teddy KGB.
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The Cincinnati Kid (1965)
Was there a cooler actor walking the globe than Steve McQueen in the 1960s? Quentin Tarantino gave the star a tiny part in his fictionalized 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood' (2019), played by Damian Lewis. In addition, the director also ingeniously edited Leonardo DiCaprio's character Rick Dalton in McQueen's lead role of 'The Great Escape' (1963). 2 years after that classic war movie, the legendary actor traded prison camp for the poker table in 'The Cincinnati Kid' (1965).
At 35, Hollywood's tormented speed demon was actually too old for the title role. But who makes what Steve McQueen? Correct. The storyline set in New Orleans during the Depression is so succinct it fits on a poker card. The young rooster 'The Kid' (Steve McQueen) challenges established Lancey 'The Man' Howard (a matchless Edward G. Robinson as an unyielding poker veteran) to a game of '5 Card Stud'. Entirely in the tradition of old Hollywood films, this is done with 'open stakes' instead of the usual 'table stakes' today.
But whether 'The Kid' is enough with his unshakable facial features? The nerve-racking endgame still remains a masterclass in acting and tension building 6 decades later.
How Movies Affect Non GamStop Casinos?
Movies have influenced many things and concepts. It is safe to say that they create mental images about everything around us. However, not all concepts depicted in the films are correct. For example, when you see a picture of a gambler in any movie, you think one of three things is that this gambler is addicted, or will implement a strategy that no one else knows, or has a heavenly mental skill! In addition, you will not find any women at the casino table, women are only in the casinos to serve the men! In fact, this picture is not correct at all! Most gamblers are neither scammers nor geniuses, and they play for fun rather than for the sake of making a fortune. Moreover, women can play in casinos outside GamStop exactly like men!
We can say that virtual gambling has a reciprocal effect as well as there are many slots based on famous movies like:
- A Nightmare on Elm Street
- Ace Ventura
- Agent Jane Blonde
- Agent of Hearts
- Agent Royale
