Dross into dross, for fun and thrills

Rating: 6/10 (2 April 2008)

Luketic ('Legally Blonde,' 'Monster-in-Law') provides a few thrills and some pretty mindless fun in this more or less reality-based story about a half-dozen college students involved in a risky but successful get-rich-quick gambling scheme supervised by their MIT math professor. Interest is provided by the contrast between the dour snow-covered Boston area setting of the Ivy League school and the glitter of Vegas. Kevin Spacey plays the manipulative, larcenous prof who masterminds the scheme and Lawrence Fisbourne is his old hood nemesis, protecting casino interests. It's slumming for such good actors to indulge in this sort of shallow diversion, but they add tone to the proceedings. A movie like this that skips over details like fine-tuned dialog, character development, or intelligent exposition cuts little ice with critics but is catnip at the box office in this winter-release dead time. Younger viewers can if they choose enjoy the images of honor roll kids grabbing quick money at the Blackjack tables in a world of danger and romance; gambling freaks may fantasize on sequences wherein players beat the tables for hundreds of thousands. The risk factor is real: "counting cards" may not be illegal in playing "21," as Spacey's character says, but a team working the tables in a coordinated operation using secret signals is the best possible way to get casino goons on your tail.
The weaknesses of 21 are many; nothing works too well unless you watch with your brain on hold. The young characters have no depth. Spacey and Fishbourne are on hold too. Spacey, whose classroom talk predictably has precious little to do with MIT-level mathematics, is never anything but a bossy and threatening smart aleck. Fishbourne is a tough and relentless meanie, about whom we know only that he's soon to retire without benefits and that he once knew Spacey as a Blackjack ace long ago. The details of the game and the counting are mushed up. The pleasant enough, mildly cute young English actor Jim Sturgess as Ben, the brilliant new recruit of Prof. Micky who becomes the team's big player, is about as lackluster and generic as a young lead could be. As his sidekick on the team and erstwhile girlfriend Jill, the (also) cute, stylish-looking Kate Bosworth is another actor whose talents are debatable and whose character is so underwritten as to be nonexistent. For "color" we get one Asian guy, Choi (Aaron Yoo), who adds a few lines and a head of wacky, Basquiat-like hair. The real-life Asian identity of most of the MIT team has been dropped.
An excellent online discussion by Ian Kaplan (bearcave.com) gives evidence that the fictionalized true story '21's' based on, 'Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions' by novelist Ben Mezrich, is a page-turner, but itself shallow and poorly written--and possibly exaggerated as to the amounts of cash involved. A weakness in execution in the movie version is that the team members don't use disguises until after they think they've been spotted. They don't ever change their signals, and the key one is ridiculously obvious. It's doubtful that Ben could come in as a high roller, win big, and then just move to another nearby table; the real life team had to win often but small--and in many other places besides Vegas. Ben also violates the rules of winning by counting by being flashy and getting on a first name basis with doormen as well as staying at deluxe comp suites with Jill, another gauche attention-getter. He would have been spotted and barred. The team's partying a lot and going on shopping sprees when they win big are two other obvious no-no's. Are they trying to get caught? And the depiction of the tables action is simple, one scene hard to distinguish from another. Director Luketic and his writers Peter Steinfeld and Allan Loeb don't know how to make card play compelling and specific. The prof, Micky Rosa (funny name for somebody teaching non-linear algebra at MIT, but real name of an actual Blackjack ace) is accompanying the kids to Vegas and getting half their take, but what follow-up supervision is he providing? No wonder that when Ben succumbs to hubris and messes up big time and Micky dumps him they decide to proceed on their own. The movie provides a level of violence the real life account lacks. Counters are usually barred, not beaten. The movie nemesis Cole Williams represents a whole team in real life, shown here as giving way to computerized devices; in reality both high tech and human elements are used to protect casinos from being wiped out. But in general the movie has, by the evidence, dumbed down and simplified an already low-IQ book.
The movie's narrative framework is as mildly clever but shallow as the whole. Ben is being interviewed for a full scholarship at Harvard Medical School where he's been accepted and the interviewer tells him to get this special prestigious all-expenses "Nelson" award he needs to exhibit "startling" attributes and tell a story that "leaps off the page." This is that story. Only trouble is, he's trying to raise the $300,00 he needs for Harvard throughout the narrative. "Did that leap off the page?" Ben asks the interviewer at the end, who responds with a dumb look. We're supposed to respond to all this with dumb looks too. Ben is provided with a naive mom who offers her limited life savings to put him through Harvard Med. He also has two nerdy MIT best buddies working on a science robotics contest whom he drops when the excitement starts and then touchingly reunites with thereafter. Neat, and dumb. Movies have been known to spin weak books into gold; not this time though. Luketic & Co. have spun a book with an interesting story to tell into a down-time diversion that rated only a 48 on Metacritic. But in spite of all this, it still has some entertainment value.