21 Movie Goes Bust

During the voice over of the opening scenes of the movie 21 the main character is telling the audience that you have to be extremely gifted to be able to count cards and because he has the ability, he has won over $640,000 for the night playing Blackjack. It was at that moment I knew that I would be watching a comedy rather than a drama for the next two hours.

“Winner, Winner Chicken Dinner” is a phrase that is repeated throughout the movie. Whenever I heard the line, the word “Turkey” kept coming to my mind and I think it more accurately describes this movie. The movie is mildly entertaining at best.

Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess) is an MIT student who needs tuition money to attend Harvard medical school. He is recruited by Micky Rosa,(Kevin Spacey) a math professor, to join a group of his fellow students who have mastered card counting and are playing blackjack every weekend in Las Vegas. At first he is reluctant to get involved but he is later convinced by Jill Taylor (Kate Bosworth) a sexy teammate whom he has a crush on. Ben spends weeks learning to count cards and honing his skills in preparation for his first trip to the casino. Before he can join the group in Las Vegas he must pass their test, which of course he does with flying colors.

The team then heads to Las Vegas and under Micky’s direction they use their blackjack card counting skills to beat the casinos. Unfortunately the team is soon seduced by the money and the high roller’s lifestyle. Greed and petty jealousy creeps into the team and causes problems within. Meanwhile more problems are brewing on the outside as they attract the attention of Cole Williams (Lauerence Fishburne) a tough casino security agent with an obsession for catching card counter and a past that is tied back to Micky Rosa. There is trouble in paradise as the team is pursued by Williams who is determined to stop them at all costs.

The movie is advertised as being based on Ben Mezrich’s book Bringing Down the House about a team of MIT students who use card counting to beat the casinos out of millions of dollars. Other than the fact that both stories are about MIT students playing blackjack, they are as different as night and day. By the end of the movie I thought I was watching an episode of the recently cancelled TV series Vegas.

If you have read Bringing Down the House and expected the movie to follow the book you will be disappointed.

The characters are shallow, selfish and unbelievable. For a group of students who are supposed to be geniuses they act as dumb as rocks and if they had been a true group of card counters, they would not have lasted five minutes in a real casino without being detected and tossed out.

I like movies set in Las Vegas and I enjoy watching the scenes of the city. However some of the scenes were as phony as the plot. At one point two of the characters are supposed to be in a suite at the Hard Rock casino but they are looking out the window at the Bellagio fountains. The Hard Rock not even on the Strip and it would be impossible to see that view.

The scenes of the team playing blackjack near the end of the movie were not only unrealistic, they were downright silly. If you are looking for a realistic representation of how a blackjack card counting team operates you will not find it in this movie. If you can suspend your belief of reality you might find it mildly entertaining.