Slow paced, predictable movie we've seen before

Rating: 5/10 (29 March 2008)

You know the studio is nervous about a film when the publicists are leaking stories about the "steamy" love scene between the stars. (As it turns out there was a harmless 10 second scene that had no steam and no passion). "21" is an unusually slow paced drama loosely based on a card counting scheme pulled off (at least for a while) by some very smart MIT students. The fingers of the development executives are all over this film--an unconvincing love story about a nerd who gets the hot chick; the devious professor masterminding the kids for reasons that are murky; the security team worried about how advancing technology is impacting their careers, once based on gut and guile. The film meanders to find a real theme and the conceit that the single smartest student at MIT had to count cards in Vegas to pay for Harvard Medical School (according to the movie only one scholarship per year is granted and the last recipient was a Korean with one leg!!) is preposterous. Apparently, student loans are a thing of the past. Instead of a fast paced story about greed (which is what this film should have been about), we get a meandering drama that fails to convince at any level. The acting was generally good considering some of the ridiculous dialog that the actors had to embrace. Kate Bosworth has lost any sex appeal she may have had--anorexia ain't sexy. Kevin Spacey and Laurence Fishburne get a chance to ham it up a bit. In the end, the film is too driven by a need to please all quadrants and ends up pleasing none.