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Movie Review: 21
by Bill Wine
As chronicled in the Ben Mezrich nonfiction book, Bringing Down the House, a group of college students train to become expert card-counters and head to the blackjack tables of Las Vegas in search of a financial killing.
RATING: PG-13
GENRE: Drama
RELEASE DATE: March 28, 2008
RUNNING TIME: 2 hours and 3 minutes
VIOLENCE FACTOR: A few segments involve violent beatings that border on torture
BAD WORDS: Surprisingly, none
RACY? Very tame and brief partial nudity
GRANDS:
CRITIQUE:
Based on real life or not, 21 is much more about reel life than real life. Thus does inherently interesting subject matter get jacked up into glitzy, watchable hokum.
Ben is an M.I.T. student, a math whiz. Played by Across the Universe lead Jim Sturgess, he's got the grades to go to Harvard Medical School — his lifelong dream — but not the money. When a group of mathletes, under the tutorship of math professor Kevin Spacey, ask Ben if he'd like to spend his weekends in Las Vegas winning big bucks by applying a can't-miss card-counting technique at the blackjack table, he says that's not his bag. But when his Harvard scholarship falls through, things change and he can't say no, especially to a fellow math nerd as good-looking as Kate Bosworth.
That's the setup in this crime caper/cautionary tale based on a true story about the group of card-counting M.I.T. students who won so much loot in Vegas, the casinos changed their table rules. Ben and his teammates end up winning big, but it's not enough for the new and greedy Big Ben, where his undoing comes at the hands of Spacey and menacing casino security consultant Laurence Fishburne.
Produced by Spacey (among others), 21 represents an attempt by Aussie Robert Luketic (Legally Blonde, Monster-In-Law) to show that he can direct genres other than comedy. Unfortunately, he doesn't come close to pulling a movie blackjack. In Sturgess, Luketic has an appealing leading man, but the script deals us so many examples of arbitrary, improbable, or even preposterous behavior, we fold long before the second shuffle.
You and your older grandkids may like a few of the cards you're dealt, but this uneven rise-and-fall-and-rise drama is by no means a winning hand.
GP Rating System:
Three Grands = Bravo, don't miss it.
Two Grands = Good enough, don't dismiss it.
One Grand = Okay, even if we dis it.
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