21 (2008)

If you needed $300,000 to pay for Harvard medical school, what would you do? If you’re like most people in that situation, you’d likely apply for student aid loans, grants, and scholarships to help foot the bill. If you’re an MIT whiz kid with a penchant for numbers, then you’d learn to count cards and go take Vegas for a ride.

At least that’s what happens in the 2008 film 21, where none of the characters have apparently ever heard of financial aid, work-study programs, self-control, or anything less than the most prestigious scholarship Harvard has to offer. All I can say, is it’s a good thing real life doesn’t imitate the goings-on in this movie, otherwise we’d have a shortage of doctors in the country, what with everyone thinking they need their full tuition amount up front and all.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Ben Campbell (played by Jim Sturgess) is a senior at MIT who wants nothing more than to go to Harvard medical school. He’s got the grades (straight A’s), the MCAT score (44), and all the right teacher recommendations. What he doesn’t have is the $300,000 for tuition. So he’s applying for a prestigious full-ride scholarship, one that will go to a single student out of 76 applicants. Being a math whiz, Ben immediately knows how slim his odds of winning are.

After dazzling professor Micky Rosa (Kevin Spacey) with some quick percentage calculations in class, Ben is approached to join a secret club of card counters. Led by Rosa, the club consists of four other MIT students who are just as brilliant with numbers as Ben is. They practice counting during the week, and then head to Vegas to clean out the casinos (or, as this movie seems to imply, casino — singular).

Ben is apprehensive about joining in, despite the fact that everyone makes it a point to explain to him that counting cards is not illegal. But since Ben’s beautiful blond crush Jill Taylor (Kate Bosworth) is involved, it’s only a matter of time before Ben caves in and says, “Yes.”

From that point forward, the film goes into autopilot, following a course everyone in the audience more or less expects. Ben proves to be very adept at counting cards. He wins big on his first few trips to Vegas, allowing him to live the high life. He then starts making mistakes and loses big. He has a falling out with Rosa. And then there’s a twist at the end to wrap everything up nice and tidy — just as Hollywood likes it.

My Reaction: As an avid blackjack player myself, I really wanted to like 21. But there were so many things in this film that simply didn’t make sense that it was hard for me to overlook the flaws and enjoy the ride.

One of the biggest problems with this film is that the basic setup regarding the money for Harvard medical wasn’t believable. Why wouldn’t Ben apply for financial aid like 99% of the other students out there? Why did he need all of the tuition money up front? How was he able to afford MIT in the first place? Instead of opening with montages and a voiceover, perhaps it would have been better for the filmmakers to explore some of these questions by giving the audience more background info on Ben first.

Another problem I had with the film was the way the team’s first practice session was portrayed. All of the members were sitting around in the MIT basement or whatever, and were practicing their counting. How is it that they were messing up the count??? These players had been involved in Micky’s group for a long time, so they knew what they were doing. If they couldn’t track the cards in a quiet room with no distractions, how would they be able to do it in a casino? It was obviously just a script gimmick to allow Ben to make his grand entrance, but it was so awkward and bumbling that it totally bugged me.

I also had a hard time figuring out why the team gambled at the same casino every time they went to Vegas. I read some message forums for this movie, where many other people had the same question. One possible answer was that Micky’s team was playing in the only casino left that didn’t use the biometric facial recognition software that the Laurence Fishburne character kept talking about. But if I recall correctly, the gamblers didn’t know about that software at all — not until Ben was hauled down to the basement for his beating. With all the casinos in Vegas, it just seems like they could have been more careful about changing their venue.

And why wouldn’t they mix things up by going to Atlantic City as well? Not as big as Vegas, of course, but there’s still blackjack action over there, right?

Don’t get me started about why Ben would hide the money in his dorm room and not in a safety deposit box, his mother’s home, or even in an offshore account. $300k is nothing to sneeze at, so this was another thing that didn’t make sense about the movie and that was clearly in place just so the story would work out for the screenwriter.

I didn’t even feel that the gambling sequences were done right in this film. The way the montages were put together, the viewer gets the impression that when the count is high, the player will just win, win, win. That’s not true at all. It’s still a total roller coaster ride as far as winning some hands and losing some hands in the shoe — because the count is high for the dealer too! The dealer will get just as many 19s, 20s, and blackjacks as the players, so to make it look like high count = automatic wins was just bullshit.

Overall, 21 suffered from all of the problems I listed above and plenty more that I don’t have the energy to get into. I was hoping this film could become Rounders for the blackjack crowd, but it just doesn’t have the substance. I give it 2 stars out of 5.