Crime pays at Las Vegas Mob Experience
The mob returns to Las Vegas! The Mob Exerience at the Tropicana Resort depicts the rise and fall of organized crime in Sin City. Credit: MCT/Kirk McKoy
Las Vegas, where fantasy and reality switch faster than a showgirl's costumes, combines them to honor its founding fathers: mobsters.
"Las Vegas Mob Experience" at the Tropicana Las Vegas is the underworld via Disney World -- an interactive, holographic, theme-park history devoted to bad guys.
Consider it a "family" vacation of a different kind.
What you'll see
Since Las Vegas was built by gangsters whose intent included luring money from Hollywood, the exhibit fittingly combines mob memorabilia, from Meyer Lansky's Social Security card (109-03-8534) to Mickey Cohen's ties (gaudy), with film and TV mythmaking, from images of "The Godfather" to "The Sopranos."
Indeed, actors such as James "Sonny Corleone" Caan and Tony "Paulie Walnuts" Sirico are among the three-dimensional guides, taking you scene-to-scene, starting with a dark, moody New York harbor. A bit later, a performer whose voice, looks and garb evoke Robert De Niro's stylized "Ace" Rothstein, the role based on "Lefty" Rosenthal in "Casino," appears as an official greeter, who advises how you can "get made" or, if you mess up, get whacked.
And, of course, you do get a nickname.
Poker chips from the fictional Tangiers casino and an autographed script from the classic HBO series also are on display. So are the re-created living room where Ben "Bugsy" Siegel rather than Moe Greene gets it in the eye, and the Lansky library, which includes a volume on tax loopholes.
All this is displayed with a sense of nostalgia and entertainment more than any moralizing about the impact of organized crime. How else do you sell T-shirts announcing "Team Lansky" and "You Don't Know Me"? -- the latter, courtesy of the Federal Witness Protection Program. Orsouvenir photos that put you in a police lineup?
Mob -- through time
The walk-through show traces the trajectory of criminality, beginning with the Black Hand in Little Italy and the 1909 murder in Palermo of New York police lieutenant Joseph Petrosino. Eventually, you arrive at the mob-backed start of Vegas casinos with Siegel's Flamingo, his nickname for girlfriend Virginia Hill. You also enter the "L.A. Confidential" realm of Mickey Cohen; and the corporate Vegas of bizarre-behavior billionaire Howard Hughes, who bought the Desert Inn rather than be evicted and became the town's biggest casino owner.
As Michael Corleone once observed, "It's strictly business."
The Vegas-and-the-mob saga finally is punctuated by the bloody reign of Tony "The Ant" Spilotro, the model for Joe Pesci's harrowing Nicky Santoro character in "Casino."
Along the way, you're asked to deliver money to "Big Leo," perhaps another, less-direct movie tribute, this time to "The Freshman." Cinephiles may view a documentary about problems faced by Hollywood filming "The Godfather."
There apparently is a very good reason why Lenny Montana, the big guy who played Luca Brasi, was so convincing.
IF YOU GO
LAS VEGAS MOB EXPERIENCE AT TROPICANA LAS VEGAS
Open 10 a.m.-10 p.m.
702-739-2662, lvme.com
ADMISSION $39.95-$59.95 ($99.95 annual pass)
