MIT senior Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess), willing to try almost anything to raise the tuition money he needs to attend Harvard Med, is recruited by MIT professor Micky Rosa (Kevin Spacey) to join a team of card-counting students who make weekend excursions to Las Vegas and use their unique talents to (figuratively) rob casinos blind. Ben and his pals are doing nothing illegal, and their plan seems foolproof, but their winning streak soon goes to their heads, and they eventually catch the eye of Cole Williams (Laurence Fishburne), an old-school casino security chief who doesn’t like the idea of someone trying to beat the odds on his watch.

CRITIQUE

The modus operandi of the makers of 21 was to take a potentially intriguing idea, dumb it down with a bunch of Hollywood clichés and contrivances, bloat the running time by a good twenty-five minutes, telegraph every turn of the plot well ahead of time, and turn what could have been perfectly serviceable non-think entertainment into don’t-think-about-it-all-or-you’ll-realize-you’re-wasting-your-time entertainment. It’s highly unlikely it will go down as the worst movie of the year, but I wouldn’t be surprised if 21 turns out to be the blandest.

21 is purportedly based on a true story, recounted in Ben Mezrich’s book Bringing Down the House. But Mezrich’s book, despite being sold as nonfiction, actually contains less factual information than A Million Little Pieces. The screenplay plays even faster and looser with the truth, so at this point any resemblance to actual events is completely coincidental. There were card-counting teams comprised of MIT students, but most of these students were Asian.

The history of these teams runs back to the late 1970s, and they weren’t put together by a professor at the school, but were largely the brainchild of a notorious cardsharp. And no one ever ran afoul of a rotund, taciturn security chief. But I suppose the filmmakers thought no one would be interested in seeing how a bunch of braniacs got some payback in Sin City, so they simply co-opted the basic premise and then incorporated elements from practically every underdog-makes-good movie made over the past century.

Personally I would rather have seen a fact-based look at just how these kids managed to pull it off; that way I could have learned something and been exposed to something I’d never seen before. 21 taught me nothing and exposed me to nothing I hadn’t already seen before.

There’s a glimmer of hope every once in a while. The cast is good, especially Sturgess and Spacey (who also coproduced the movie), who seems to be having a grand time doing sarcastic as only he can. Even Kate Bosworth, playing Sturgess’s inevitable, improbable love interest isn’t half bad (at this point I think it’s safe to say not half bad is the best we can hope for from Bosworth). And the brief glimpses of the mechanics involved in the card-counting system we actually do get to see are interesting.

However, these glimmers are tiny and short-lived, overpowered and outnumbered by the rote unfolding of the story and the silliness that slowly but surely begin to creep in (exactly why Spacey is disguised as M.C. Gainey at one point remains a mystery, and I could have done without the shopping montage and artificial rivalries). And there’s simply no getting around the fact the movie is far too long; even if it worked this movie should be no longer than one-hundred minutes, but here it runs just over two hours, which is painful.

Some visual flair would also have been welcome; director Robert Luketic (whose work on such classics as Monster-in-Law and Legally Blonde has made him one of Hollywood’s go-to guys for bland and boring) shoots the entire movie in the most vanilla manner possible (does every Vegas flick really need a montage of casino signs?). Worst of all, though, is the decision to dial all of the characters from smart to stupid simply to fuel the plot.

Honestly, what math whiz/robotics genius/doctoral candidate worth his salt would actually be dumb enough to hide more than three-hundred grand in cash in the ceiling of his dorm room? That’s definitely not the sort of person I’d want probing my internal organs or trying to figure out how to send a man to Mars.

THE VIDEO

The 2.40:1/1080p transfer looks very good, with only a slight haziness in some of the Boston exteriors compromising its overall quality. Interiors and all of the Vegas sequences look excellent, with rich, deep blacks and near-perfect reproduction of the far-ranging color palette. And despite the cinematography’s video origins (the movie was shot using Genesis HD cameras), the film-like appearance of the image is consistent throughout.

THE AUDIO

The movie’s sound design is generally front-heavy, and at times the Dolby TrueHD 5.1 audio (available in English, French, or Portuguese) feels a bit constricted. There’s not much in the way of surround action, not even during the boisterous casino scenes; there’s a bit of crowd noise here and there, and the music spreads into the rears on occasion, but that’s pretty much it.

But what’s here certainly sounds good; dialogue is always clear and natural sounding, and the music, which is as bland as the movie itself (except for a misguided dance remix of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” which bypasses bland and heads straight into stupid), has a nice presence and provides some good low-end activity.

Spanish and Thai Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks are also included. English, English SDH, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Korean, Thai, and Indonesian subtitles are included.

THE EXTRAS

The commentary by director Robert Luketic and producers Dana Brunetti and Michael De Luca largely eschews talk of character and plot, instead focusing on the technical side of the shoot. There’s also some discussion of the true story of the MIT Blackjack teams, which is far more interesting than what’s presented in the movie. 

21: The Advantage Player (5 minutes) provides both a look at the origins and history of the game of Blackjack and a series of tips for players.

Basic Strategy: A Complete Film Journal (24 minutes) is a making-of featurette that, much like the commentary, focuses primarily on the technical aspects of the shoot.

Money Plays: A Tour of the Good Life (7 minutes) is a featurette devoted to the movie’s locations and production design.

The Blu-ray exclusive Virtual Blackjack Game is, as you may expect, a BD-Java version of the card game.

FINAL THOUGHTS

A game cast and a few flashes of what the movie could/should have been can’t keep 21 afloat. There’s simply not enough here to make this one worth seeing.