A new movie about group of clever, sharply-dressed cats who team up in an elaborate scheme to fleece Vegas casinos for millions? No, it's not Ocean's 14; it's 21, and it's based on the real-life events chronicled in Ben Mezrich's 2002 bestseller "Bringing Down the House."
Aussie import Jim Sturgess (Across the Universe) stars as Ben Campbell, a star student at M.I.T. who plans on becoming a doctor. Faced with a staggering med school bill and apparently disinclined toward taking on the requisite student loans, Ben is forced to ponder other methods of funding his career in medicine. Enter Micky Rosa (Kevin Spacey), a savvy math professor with a very lucrative side gig: he runs a "team" of M.I.T. students who've developed a sophisticated method of counting cards at blackjack. Armed with an complex system of code words, secret signals and elaborate disguises, the whiz kids venture to Vegas each Friday, play cards all weekend and return to class on Monday with thousands of dollars in their pockets. Principled Ben initially refuses the team's invitation to join their shady-yet-not-illegal operation, but he ultimately relents after Micky dispatches team hottie Jill Taylor (Kate Bosworth) to help persuade him.
At first everything goes smashingly. Brainy Ben proves a natural at the game, and soon he's well on his way toward raising the $300,000 needed to pay for medical school. Best of all, nobody suspects a thing. Well, nobody except casino security boss Cole Williams (Laurence Fishburne), a canny Vegas relic with a knack for old-school (read: violent) methods of protecting his assets. Viewing Ben and his braniac buddies as a threat to his livelihood, Cole makes it his personal mission to put them out of business for good.
From the outset, 21 has two major strikes against it. First, the "Breaking Vegas" thing's been done before, most recently by the Ocean's trio of movies, which together have grossed about a bazillion dollars worldwide. Second, it's exceedingly difficult to make a card game look interesting on celluloid (even the splendid James Bond flick Casino Royale lagged considerably during the poker scenes).
Faced with this dilemma, director Robert Luketic (Legally Blonde, Win a Date With Tad Hamilton!) attempts to compensate for the handicaps by playing up the more glamorous aspects of the story, lighting up the screen with splashy cinematography and lots of pretty faces (including a cast of math geeks so hip and photogenic that they look like they'd be more comfortable at F.I.T. than M.I.T.). 21 isn't entirely shallow -- due attention is paid to the nuts and bolts of the operation at the beginning -- but the end result feels much like the Sin City experience itself: exhilarating at times, but ultimately empty and unsatisfying.
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