21
Columbia Pictures, 118mins, PG-13


Directed by
Robert Luketic

In his book "Bringing Down the House," Ben Mezrich tells the story of what might be the most profitable sports team in history.  In real life, a fellow named J.P. Massar recruited mathematical geniuses from MIT and other schools to go to Los Vegas and other places with casinos, and count cards in the game of Blackjack, which is legitimate and legal pretty much anywhere, and thus take the casinos for literally millions of dollars.

The story is a compelling one, and had already inspired another movie between the time Kevin Spacey bought the rights to the book and the film was actually made. \

In telling a story like this, you have to fictionalize it to some extent, if only to prevent all those pesky lawsuits, and so, the protagonists,
Ben Campbell(Jim Sturgess) and his mentor Mickey Rosa(Kevin Spacey) aren't anything like the real people. None of them are.

So Ben is a young genius starting his last year at MIT. His widowed mother(Helen Carey) is only middle class, and Harvard Medical school costs a total of three hundred grand to attend and he's only making enough on his gig at a men's clothing store to pay for some extra meals and drinks with his nerdy friends Miles(Josh Gad) and Cam(Sam Golzari). That's when he's recruited for the MIT Blackjack team.

The team works like this: two beautiful gals(Kate Bosworth and Liza Lapira) and comic relief Choi (Aaron Yoo) would spot the “hot decks” as they call it in Card Counting, and bring in heavy hitters Ben and Fisher(Jacob Pitts) to seal the deal and the six of them would split half the take, with Coach Rosa taking the other half.

Of course, casino security, leaded by the nefarious Cole Williams (Laurence Fishburne) are doing their best to find out how to catch these people who are taking all that money.

The result is a combination of “The Paper Chase”, “Animal House” and “Goodfellas.” The acting is well above par, considering director Robert Luketic's track record, Sturgess manages to lost his British accent completely. Peter Steinfeld and Allan Loeb's screenplay manages to get the hackneyed “crime doesn't pay”  theme stuck in without it being too obvious. This is actually a rather fun film and worth a look.