Intriguing 21 a Disappointing Bust
Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess, Across the Universe) is one of MIT’s best and brightest, maybe even the most gifted student on the entire campus. But just because he’s brilliant doesn’t mean he’s rich, and even though Harvard Medical School is welcoming him with open arms he’s still got to come up with the hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay for it.
Jim Sturgess and Kate Bosworth in Columbia Pictures' 21
Enter sexy fellow student Jill Taylor (Kate Bosworth, Superman Returns) and unorthodox math professor and stats genius Micky Rosa (Kevin Spacey, American Beauty). They present him with an offer to join their team of other exceptional young adults and head to Las Vegas. You see, they’ve cracked the Blackjack code and unlocked a safe containing millions of potential dollars, and with Ben on their side this group of hard-charging card counters could set themselves up for life long before college graduation.
At first reluctant, soon the fellow math whiz is seduced by the glitz and glamour of the casinos, getting caught up in all the disguises, wild shopping sprees and cathartic freewheeling individualism money allows. But Ben shouldn’t count his chips before the cards have been fully shuffled, the Vegas strip’s most menacing enforcer Cole Williams (Laurence Fishburne, The Matrix trilogy) hot on the MIT team’s trail, his longing to bring them down leading to a showdown none of them – even the wily Rosa – is able to predict.
Somewhat based on the true story of a group of MIT students and their card counting exploits during the 1990’s, the new drama 21 certainly has its merits. The hook is a solid one, and with a cast featuring the explosive talents of Fishburne and Spacey the film is anything but dull. There is a fire and sizzle to the Vegas scenes that crackle with pulsating electricity and everyone in the young cast (even the much maligned Bosworth) acquits themselves so nicely it’s difficult not to be impressed.
But Peter Steinfeld (Drowning Mona) and Allan Loeb’s (Things We Lost in the Fire) script, an adaptation of Ben Mezrich’s best selling book, contains about 80 minutes of material, director Robert Luketic (Legally Blonde) stretching it all out for two whole stupefying hours. Why he does this is way beyond me, and because of these pacing problems the film becomes borderline unbearable, and every time something of interest happens it is quickly followed by two or three additional moments slowing all the action down to a frustratingly infuriating crawl.
Pity, because even though the basic setup isn’t anything other then routine I was ready to give 21 the benefit of the doubt. The fresh-faced Sturgess has a winsome quality that’s enormously intoxicating. The man has charm to spare, and whether he is engaging in horrifically awful banter with Jonah Hill clone Josh Gad (Fox’s “Back to You”) or staring fearfully at a brutishly belligerent Fishburne it’s obvious right from the start this guy’s a bona fide star.
Other plusses include Oscar-winner Russell Carpenter’s (Titanic) gliding cinematography, Missy Stewart’s (Feast of Love) dynamic production design and Elliot Graham’s (The Greatest Game Ever Played) crackerjack editing. Even Luketic doesn’t entirely drop the ball, the middle portion showcasing Ben’s Las Vegas seduction particularly effective.
If only it all held together better and didn’t feel so obvious and cliché. More, if the darn thing didn’t take three days to get to the point many of these lesser script problems could have been, if not entirely forgiven, at least partially overlooked. Instead, even with so much working in its favor, 21 feels like a bust, and anyone paying the price to see it in the theater will probably come out wishing they’d folded their hand and bet their hard-earned chips on a different picture altogether.
Film Rating: êê (out of 4)
Additional Links:
- 21 Theatrical Trailer
