Nothing funny, nothing sensational, nothing joyful; perhaps a little interesting

Rating: 5/10 (30 August 2008)

Worth to watch for spectacular views from Las Vegas, the movie 21 starts with a "Maverick"ish gambler movie opening. Though, this movie is not even half good as Maverick. We initially see how Jack and Ace forms a lovely couple. Then we meet our leading actor Ben something, the singing frog of the movie "Across the Universe", as a very sharp-witted campus kid trying to persuade the dean of the Harvard Medical School to access student scholarships.
A gambler gang of campus kids leading by Kevin Spacey drives Ben and the others' -including Kate Bosworth as another campus kid- minds over gambling in Las Vegas by means of proved mathematical methods of counting cards. Ben, who must have swallowed a calculator, becomes the smartest one of all. We are witnessing our campus kids how actually they gamble with cheating over cards at a casino. Best thing of the casino scenes are the chance of getting know how the backstage of security cams goes. There are a bunch of technicians trying to catch whoever does cheating on the games.
The actual happenings of the story is hidden behind the script. Accordingly, it forces us to undone the knots. Yet regrettably, the search for straightening the story is just getting boring and boring until the end starts to occur, while leaving mentioned questions unanswered.
Thankfully at the final, knots are getting undone. For five minutes long, while Rolling Stones-You Can't Always Get What You Want is playing, we see how the life takes on shape for each character. Then we end up at where we started; back on the faculty dean's room, Ben is still talking to the dean. Whole movie has passed in this room, we realize. The dean looks persuaded by Ben for his scholarship.