21

I read the book this movie is based on, Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich, several years ago, so I was excited to see the movie. Of course, going in I expected that Hollywood would munge up the story so bad as to make it incomparable to the original work. I was right.

This movie is about the MIT Blackjack Team, a group of MIT students and a professor that ran a card counting ring to reap profits from numerous casinos around the country, but mainly centered on Las Vegas casinos. Of course, the film's title comes from the game they played to earn these winnings, Blackjack 21, or just 21.

In short, the band, led by a professor, learns a card counting technique that allows them to keep track of the "count" of a deck (or, actually, the five deck "shoe" that most casinos use now). They learn to use signals and secret words in order to communicate with other team members. By acting as a team, they are able to reap higher profits and avoid detection by casino security personnel.

I thought the casting for the film was rather good. Jim Sturgess (as Ben Campbell), while not Asian as in Mezrich's book, comes across as a slightly geeky run-of-the-mill college student. Of course, he's incredibly good with numbers, but that doesn't interfere with his personality too much. Spacey does a good job at being a college professor with a dark side. The scenes with him teaching feel genuine and he really sounds like he knows what he's talking about. He looks comfortable on the classroom floor, like he's been teaching there for decades. And I have no problem with Kate Bosworth as Jill Taylor (dig the heterochromic eyes), though her character is rather one dimensional. But she matches what I remember from the book as the love interest for Campbell.

First off, this movie gets several things right. I'll try not to give anything away, but the signals they use in the movie are identical to the ones in Mezrich's book, as are the "secret" words used to disclose the count. The club did consist of several MIT students under the direction of a professor who came up with the techniques. The main character is a male, and the rest of the makeup is more or less similar to the makeup presented in the book.

However, the movie got several things wrong, some seriously wrong, and so glaring that Joan (the awesome wife) who saw it with me was able to spot them, even though she never read the book. But I can't really discuss them without giving anything away. So, feel free to read my other page, What they got wrong with 21, if you've already seen the movie or don't mind having things ruined for you.

By itself, however, 21 is a fair movie, with excitement and tension. It could've benefitted from adhering more rigorously to Mezrich's book, but this was nearly impossible according to our dear friend Douglas Adams, "Getting a movie made in Hollywood is like trying to grill a steak by having a succession of people coming into the room and breathing on it." After all those people breathed on it, I guess it's surprising how much the film actually got right.

External links

• 21 at the Internet Movie Database
• 21 at Rotten Tomatoes
• 21 at Kids in Mind
• 21 at Wikipedia