21 | Red Rock Casino, Summerlin — Where the Signal Gets Missed

The team's discipline breaks here. Ben stops watching the spotter, plays a count that has already turned against him, and loses two hundred thousand dollars of other people's money in a single sitting. The scene was shot at Red Rock Casino Resort and Spa, 11011 West Charleston Boulevard, twenty minutes west of the Strip in Summerlin.

Choosing an off-Strip locals' resort was a smart production decision and an even better dramatic one. Red Rock opened in April 2006, so it was still new when the cameras arrived, and it does not look like a tourist casino: lower ceilings over the pit, more regulars, staff who recognize faces. It is the kind of room where an unfamiliar young man with an oversized bankroll gets noticed within the hour.

Keep driving west afterward. Charleston Boulevard runs straight into the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area, and the sandstone escarpment the resort is named for turns orange in the last hour of light. Fifteen minutes from a blackjack table you can stand in complete silence, which is the exact distance the film's characters never manage to put between themselves and the game.