Did someone say, "Deal?"

Rating: 6/10 (1 August 2008)

MIT professor Micky Rosa (Spacey) recruits some of the brightest minds there to help him take Las Vegas down by having these students count cards at the Blackjack tables. Counting cards is not illegal, but if caught there are consequences.
This movie is based loosely on events that happened in the 1990s when MIT students took Las Vegas for millions by counting cards. The story here is fiction and goes to show how things might have been done.
We knew what they were trying to do without understanding the mechanics of counting cards. And, we are left with Ben (Sturgess) getting greedy by gambling and not counting as per the system. So it turns into a story about some MIT students, greed, betrayal, and retaliation. There's a twist in here. Was there that twist back in the day when this all happened.? Probably not. Actually, the twist helps save the movie. How about that deal?
The acting was fine by all, but I do not know why they bothered to have a love interest story too as there was no chemistry between Ben and Jill (Bosworth). Oh, it wasn't much but it was there. Wait a minutegood looking guy, good looking girlOh, I get it..Got to have it now.
How, in real life, in the 1990s, were these students caught? Casino people kept seeing the same faces at the same Casinos over a period of time and put 2+2 together. No, this movie did not "catch" them that way.
Usually, when a story is true we learn what happened to the participants at the end of the movie before the credits are run. There was nothing shown here along those lines. But then again, in real life, the students were rotated over the years so I guess that would be hard to do. In real life, there may not have been an MIT professor who managed and supervised the operation so it may have just been the students themselves. The students were told never to come back to Vegas or they would be prosecuted for trespassing. Did someone say "DEAL?"
If you take out the DVD, there is a Special Features section on it where the cast will explain Card-Counting. Good luck with that.
Violence: Yes. Sex: No. Nudity: No. Language: No.