I am not a gambler nor have I ever been even remotely interested in learning the trade. It is not that I deem it sinful but rather I have no interest in it whatsoever. For entertainment I’d rather curl up with a book, watch a movie or play video games till my eyes bleed. That is not to say I can’t guess what it might feel like to win big or to beat the house. I’m sure gamblers get a natural high and who wouldn’t be elated if they risked and won.

21 is based on a true story of a team of MIT students who beat the casinos at their own game. Obviously, the movie takes many liberties with the source material but the core elements are basically the same. Jim Sturgess, fresh off his singing in the Beatles’ inspired Across the Universe, is Ben Campbell, an incredibly gifted though introverted young man, who stands one step away from attaining his dream of attending Harvard medical school. The problem – he needs $300,000 to pay his tuition. Ben and his two best friends are basically geeks who spend their days designing for an upcoming technology competition while ogling women from afar.

Enter his Professor, Mickey Rosa, played with his usual gusto by Kevin Spacey. Rosa identifies Ben as having a quick calculating mind and invites him to join his shadowy gang of blackjack players. His team is well honed and versed in card counting techniques that, when coupled with team strategy, is well placed to fleece casinos of their money. At first Ben is repulsed by such an offer but eventually relents as he sees no possible avenue in which he can raise his tuition funds.

21 glides along with a quick pace during the initial acts as Ben slowly becomes consumed with his double life of being a nobody back in Boston while living the high life in Vegas. Once shy with principles he’s quickly sucked into the gambling culture and its excesses. Previously content with ill fitting suits he soon finds himself shopping at Prada and wearing impeccably tailored outfits with obligatory dark shade sunglasses. As the team keeps on rolling Ben finds himself developing an intimate friendship with fellow team member Jill Taylor, played by Kate Bosworth, while butting heads with former hot shot Jimmy (Jacob Pitts). These parts of the film are well paced and the audience is truly piqued to see how this team and their strategies might play out at the tables.

Then a funny thing happens to the film as it enters the midway point as issues that at first appeared to be oversights quickly become logically jarring. For a team of incredibly intellectually gifted people there are many actions they undertake that would make even the biggest of idiots scratch their heads. Now, I’m no expert at “cheating the system” but I would take it that staying incognito is a primary goal. Instead, as Ben falls deeper down the rabbit hole he becomes over flamboyant and draws attention to himself wherever he goes in Vegas. Attendants, dealers, waitresses, all know his alias the moment he walks through the casino doors. This applies to his team members as well. Though it is mentioned more than once, the team’s idea of a disguise is basically a different shade of Prada attire.

Concurrently, the team keeps hitting the same casinos in Vegas. They never go anywhere else or to another city to ply their skills. This obvious oversight comes back to haunt them as their actions begin to arouse the suspicion of Cole Williams (Laurence Fishburn), a casino security advisor who suspects the fix is on. Just how smart can you be if you keep trying to rip off the same casino? Making matters worse is Professor Rosa’s past which is revealed to involve Cole Williams losing a previous job. I can understand that the lure of fast cash is enough to make grown men drunk with greed but when you have heavies after you I really doubt you’d take the chance to piss the same security staff off when you are a marked man.

Also, instead of playing it safe and winning smaller amounts of cash, the team keeps going for the “big payouts” easily racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars in a small amount of time. One would think everyone in the team winning small amounts would not attract much attention.

Ben himself also has immense lapses of reason. As his earnings begin to pile up he finds no better place for his stash of hard cash then in the ceiling above his bed. I’m sure banks and the IRS might be alerted if he kept depositing hundreds of thousands of dollars into an account but surely there are better ways to keep the cash then a ceiling. How about a safe deposit box for starters?

Even though the actual scheme is glossed over the film does a good job in pulling the audience in for the ride. It is not necessary to know the minute details of card counting other than it being a way to increase your odds of winning. The film does however, not show them losing until key plot points which is odd as there is no way their scheme can make them win 100% of the time – it is based on statistics that increase chance not eliminate it.

All these elements add up to the Hollywoodization of the original book. It’s obvious that the filmmakers here have decided to glitz up a story that, while fascinating, does not translate into a big blockbuster. Of course, it can’t follow the book that much as in reality it was a team of mostly Asians conning the casinos and I doubt Hollywood would want a cast of all Orientals. Director Robert Luketic, he of Legally Blonde fame, decides to shoot the film with a lot of montages and slow motion photography that lingers much too long on cards flying around the table. In a movie about playing blackjack it seems like a pedestrian way to show tension although seeing slowly spinning and flipping cards is not exactly spine tingling. Location shooting shows the film’s intended narrative dichotomy between Boston’s cold and grey skies and vibrant Las Vegas as colours of neon flash all around.

Still, the movie chugs along and the audience remains mildly interested at how the story will inevitably play out since all the actors appear to be sincere. Sturgess makes a sympathetic hero although he’s considerably helped by veterans Spacey and Fishbourne who dominate every single scene they are in. Just watching the younger actors in juxtaposition with the two veterans is fascinating as they almost seem reserved in comparison to the screen presence emanating from the more mature thespians. Not fairing so well is Kate Bosworth and the movie’s romantic angle that appears too wholly tacked on to the narrative in order to provide the needed love interest. The relationship goes from dry to hot in a couple of montage sequences and we’re never given a compelling reason why she falls for him. In fact, one can conclude that she succumbs to his charms after he lets the Vegas high-roller life over take him – not exactly a winning start for a serious relationship.

Fishbourne makes a menacing loss prevention security advisor but I was more intrigued with whether or not Vegas still remained basically lawless – taking suspects into the cellar and beating them into a bloody pulp might have been true back then but does it still occur nowadays? I thought casinos that are privately owned could just throw anyone out they thought was cheating. Maybe I can dig deeper into that but the interrogation sequences seem to have been ripped out of a Martin Scorsese flick.

The end result feels like it is only very loosely based on the original book with too many artistic differences that jazz up both the plot and the visual flair of the material. Indeed the bright lights of Vegas make for a more compelling image than some dive in the middle of Chicago. Nevertheless, director Robert Luketic and the screenwriters take this too far adding multiple double crosses, betrayals and even managing to shoehorn in a chase through a crowded casino. This is far too much excess for such a simple story that owes its success to statistics 101.

** out of ****

2008, USA, 123 minutes, PG-13, Columbia
Directed by Robert Luketic
Screenplay by Peter Steinfeld, Allan Loeb
Based on a book by Ben Mezrich
Produced by Dana Brunetti, Michael De Luca, Kevin Spacey
Executive Producer: William S. Beasley, Ryan Kavanaugh, Brett Ratner
Original Music by David Sardy
Cinematography by Russell Carpenter
Film Editing by Elliot Graham

Ben Campbell:Jim Sturgess
Prof. Micky Rosa: Kevin Spacey
Jill Taylor: Kate Bosworth
Choi: Aaron Yoo
Kianna: Liza Lapira
Jimmy Fisher: Jacob Pitts
Cole Williams: Laurence Fishburne

© 2009 The Galactic Pillow