Not great cinema, but nevertheless a couple of hours' entertainment

Rating: 7/10 (1 January 2011)

I think many of the reviews here are missing the point: I know nothing about betting on cards but, even if I did I would not be over-critical about the fidelity of the casino operations.
It's fiction, folks: the idea behind the film might have been based on actual happenings but - it's still fiction.
I'm a fairly hard marker about movies that rely on whiz-kid CGI and wanton destruction of expensive cars rather than sound screenplays but in this case I personally watched a presentable film, well acted and with a halfway believable plot line. OK, some of the situations were, as previously mentioned, a little set-up, but on the whole the inconsistencies didn't spoil my enjoyment.
Spacey is, in my book, one of the best and most natural actors working at present. He, and Fishburne, give excellent performances here. Spacey's handling of a controlling and mendacious lecturer is one of his best efforts.
It was a little disappointing that the old chase-through-the-kitchens scenario was hauled out yet again, but the way the finale came round again to the Harvard Med school interview to round the movie off was, I thought, a nice touch. Not, to be sure, a ten-Oscar contender but one hell of a lot better to pass the afternoon with than Inception or some of the other pretentious pseudo-intellectual rubbish that is shoved at us nowadays.