Remember, casino gamblers, the house always wins. Moviegoers only sometimes. And this happens not to be one of those times.
21 is the tale of a brilliant student at MIT who, along with four other students and the mentoring help of his mathematics professor, learns to win big at blackjack by counting cards. Jim Sturgess (the lead in the Beatles flick Across the Universe) stars as Boston townie and math whiz Ben Campbell, with Kevin Spacey, one of the film’s producers, as Mickey Rosa, the maverick prof who teaches him the infallible beat-the-house system.
Ben gets accepted to Harvard Law School, but he can’t afford to go without a full scholarship. When he first hears about the card-counting scheme involving his professor and several not-as-gifted-as-he classmates, he politely declines. More than once. Then the scholarship falls through.
Let’s see: How might he make a fortune fast? Hmmm.
With comely Kate Bosworth, one of the other math nerds, sealing the deal, Ben, with his supernatural facility with humbers, takes his position at the head of the blackjack track and joins the training regimen that will turn math brainiacs into expert card counters. When they proceed to Las Vegas to make their fortune by applying their nefarious skills at the blackjack table, they start cleaning up.
Wow, thinks Ben, this looks easy. Why don’t I just carry on by my lonesome? Then he comes up against casino security detective Laurence Fishburne — his employers call him a “loss prevention” consultant — who’s studying Ben courtesy of surveillance cameras. And Ben also incurs the wrath of his “boss” when he acts independently and defies orders: It apparently takes a rogue to recognize and resent a rogue.
Ben quickly wins enough money to cover his Harvard Med costs, but now he feels the seductive tug of the gambling lifestyle. This is his undoing. Dangerous territory beckons: a place where winning a hand can mean … losing a hand. Literally.
Aussie director Robert Luketic speads his wings a bit with this project, heretofore piloting a trio of entertaining comedies (Legally Blonde, Monster-in-Law). The script by Peter Steinfeld and Allan Loeb — loosely based on Bringing Down the House (subtitled The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions), the 2002 nonfiction best-seller by Ben Mezrich — doesn’t wander too far afield from the developing-a-skill-and-then-taking-it-too-far template in this cross between a crime caper and a cautionary morality tale.
But their narrative includes not only curious dead spots but moments of improbable and even preposterous behavior — not so much real life as reel life. So much so, in fact, that it’s difficult to remember that this tale is indeed based on actual events. Instead of wringing natural suspense out of the central situation, the plot takes turns that seem grafted on like leftovers from another genre. The characters may go on counting cards, but by the third act, we’re also counting… minutes. And, like a reckless blackjack player who hits on 17, 21 takes one card too many and runs a reel too long in its desperate attempt to deliver a socko surprise ending.
So we’ll double down on 2 stars out of 4 for the rise-and-fall fable about the win-and-lose table, the blackjack thriller, 21. Maybe what happened in Vegas should have just stayed there: Maybe, that is, it just wasn’t in the cards.
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