fine acting but clunky direction

Rating: 6/10 (11 June 2010)

Redford seems to think every plot point has to be hammered home like a tent peg. At Mark van Doren's birthday picnic, his son Charles cuts to the center of a cake inscribed "Happy Birthday Father." A few scenes later he comes come in the middle of the night and eats the last slice while his dad, who thinks the quiz show is on the level and son Charlie is an upright man like him, rattles on about the trials of authorship. A scene in the HQ of a big corporation is introduced with a low-angle shot towards the top of a skyscraper. The four anonymous nuns, shown near the beginning to illustrate the universal popularity of "21," are back once more near the end, watching the Congressional hearings into the rigging of"21." I give the movie six stars, mostly for the acting--Johann Carlo as Toby Stempel is close to perfection--but Redford's direction drags it down from eight.