21

Review By: Michael Dance
MichaelDance@TheCinemaSource.com

The trailer for 21 is good. Really good. It promises everything most people want in a movie: attractive stars, money, glitz, intrigue, sex, and action, all wrapped up in a pure wish-fulfillment fantasy. We're currently approaching the end of a depressing winter that contained few standout movies, so 21 promised just the kind of escapism I've been craving.

It delivers the goods, albeit with a handful of missteps.

Amazingly, 21 is based on a true story, which was recounted in the book Bringing Down the House: in 1993, a team of MIT students went to Vegas and made millions of dollars by counting cards in blackjack. When the movie was in its planning stages, the filmmakers assumed Vegas casino owners wouldn't let them shoot in their casinos, given the subject matter. It turned out the opposite was true: the casino owners figured the movie would propel more business because it'd make people believe they could beat the house.

They were right: one side effect of the movie is an overwhelming desire to head to Vegas (preferably under an assumed name, with a costume) and gamble your life savings away.

The hero of the saga is Ben Campbell (Across the Universe's Jim Sturgess), an MIT nerd who has just turned 21 (oh, the obvious irony!). One of his professors, Mickey Rosa (Kevin Spacey), spots Campbell's budding genius and invites him to join his student blackjack team: on weekends, they fly to Vegas under assumed names and make as much cash as possible with an intricate card-counting scam. The script requires Ben to initially refuse, of course, but as he's in need of money to go to Harvard med school, soon the mild-mannered Mathlete is living out his fantasies at the blackjack table.

The further plot developments are predictable but nonetheless entertaining: Ben gets the hot girl (Kate Bosworth), clashes with the insidious Rosa, has run-ins with the casino's head of security (Laurence Fishburne), and in general gets in way over his head. And then of course, in scenes that are (on purpose) tonal 180s, goes back to wintry Massachusetts, sleepwalks through his classes, and blows off his old brainiac friends (a subplot which was a bit too reminiscent of way too many high school comedies).

What the movie really needs is a better screenplay polish. The base concept is so good, and the cast is great – Spacey and Fishburne provide some classiness, and Sturgess is a great guy to root for – but there are too many little things that could've been tweaked.

For one thing, there are way too many voice-overs and montages, especially in the middle of