Realistic, but with anachronisms, terrific casting, loved it!!!

Rating: 10/10 (5 May 2008)

The legendary stories of card counting - dating from the 1960s Edward Thorp book "Beat the Dealer" - are seductive for anyone, but especially mathematically talented students at MIT and similar places. Jim Sturgess happens to bear an incredibly striking resemblance, in facial appearance and expressions, to a very well-known U.S. Washington DC scientist and administrator; how's that for casting? Kate Bosworth is incredibly appealing with that short but perfectly combed haircut - though perhaps not stereotypical, I nonetheless find her credible as an MIT student especially in the gym scene. Equally beautiful woman undergraduates have graced the MIT halls however unexpected. This is real, make no mistake. The cinematography of MIT is stunning and real, except there is little pedestrian traffic on Memorial Drive (where Jim Sturgess encounters other characters). Originally blackjack was dealt from a single deck and counting was a breeze. When Atlantic City was opened in the late 1970s, they instituted 8-deck shoes, so you had to keep the count not from one single deck but from 8 of them. There were subtle but statistically significant changes to the rules that better evened the odds in favor of the house. Nonetheless card-counting syndicates are said to have attempted to win under those rules using more advanced techniques than those depicted in 21. One aspect of 21 I did not like much was the emphasis on having to come up with $300K to attend Harvard Med. Certainly much of that sum could have been borrowed, so it was not factual as presented. An aspect of the movie I did not appreciate were the anachronisms: The heyday of this activity was prior to the introduction of 8-deck shoes i.e., in the 1970s yet the movie was set in the 2000's. Go figure. The 2.07 contest was not famous then. And, Harvard Med was much less costly in dollars. Dropped ceilings were not used in any MIT dorm room. Incidentally, the penurious student played by Sturgess would have undoubtedly lived at home, not in a dorm, rather than work retail sales at a preppy clothing store. It would have left more time for studying (or "tooling" -- to use the accurate MIT vernacular eschewed by the film). One other comment: I think the movie panders to the popular conception of the math "whiz" in that it seems no effort whatsoever is required for the Sturgess character to get up-to-speed. Certainly he would have needed to build his skills and even for the "genius" it would take a little while. But it's more palatable for the theatre-going public to believe that it's all talent and no hard work. That's Hollywood for you!!!