‘21’ The Movie
21 the Movie is out – and whether you’re a hot shot casino gamer or don’t even know what card counting is – the slick Vegas script and cute storyline is guaranteed to have you gobbling the popcorn with relaxed contentment. Every casino wannabe and would be thrill seeker can fantasise about the ultimate high-risk, high adrenalin and high reward dream – only this is the story of the kids who took down Vegas for real!

Release: Out now
Rating: PG 13 (caution rating)
Production: Columbia Pictures (123 minutes)
Director: Robert Luketic

Starring:
Jim Sturgess (Ben Campbell)
Laurence Fishburne (Cole Williams)
Aaron Yoo (Choi)
Kevin Spacey (Micky Rosa)
Liza Lapira (Kianna)
Jacob Pitts (Fisher)
Kate Bosworth (Jill Taylor)

The true-life background to 21 the movie
Beating the casino is impossible – right? Wrong – big time! 21 is based on the true story of a group of baby faced, whiz-kid students from the USA – who were trained as hot-shot blackjack ‘card counters’………a method they used to rinse millions from the casinos of the mighty and ‘un-beatable’ Las Vegas, during the 1990’s. All the real facts were revealed in the best selling book by Ben Merzich, ‘Bringing Down the House’. Adapted from the book, 21 is the story of how ‘Sin City’ was maid to pay for laughing at a group of clean cut kids!
Storyline – ‘every dream has a price’
Take one genius college kid, a widowed mother and a dream of Harvard Medical School and you have the recipe for just about any movie chasing the American Dream. Robert Luketic seems unapologetic in using such a predictable script, but there’s no denying it’s effective and undeniably absorbing and entertaining!
21 stars Jim Sturgess as the supremely gifted MIT student, Ben Campbell, whose dreams of medical school looked doomed unless he can find a cool $300,000 in school fees! Of course, matters are made worse by Campbell’s idealistic morals which mean he can’t take the 300K from his mother’s savings (wait for the sighs and ahhh’s).
As 21 starts, we’re soon made aware that Campbell’s brain works like a state-of-the-art computer (I’m sure he’s been using those ‘train your brain’ DVDs) – prompting some cool on screen graphical scribbling as Ben’s brain goes into overdrive. However, predictably we aren’t the only ones wowing at Campbell’s awesome brain power……the sneaky math’s professor, Micky Rosa (Kevin Spacey) soon has he hawk eyes on Campbell – intent on luring him into the shady, exciting world of professional blackjack.
As fate would have it, the good old maths prof turns out to be one of the most feared gamblers in Las Vegas (albeit one who was so good he’s public enemy number one and banned from every joint in the Neon City). And what’s more, Rosa is secretly building a clique of super-brained MIT students capable of bringing down the house with legal but highly risky blackjack strategies. And guess what – he happens to need one more member to join his eclectic team of baby faced assassins (Aaron Yoo, Kate Bosworth, Liza Lapira, Jacob Pitts & Laurence Fishburne). Of course, with Ben’s hometown golden boy morals, he has to sell his soul to blackjack – but ‘only until he has the $300,000’.
What follows is a dynamic, action-packed ride through Las Vegas - full of glitz, hi-tech card tricks, casino glamour girls and a smattering of everything Sin City has to offer.
The casinos pay for mocking the chances of the rich college kids and are soon haemorrhaging money like it’s going out of fashion, thanks to cool gadgets, body language and mega-memory techniques.
However, behind it all remains the story of Ben and the concept that everything has a price……will college dreams be destroyed by money and ego, what’s the real motive of Rosa and will the scam be discovered by the blood thirsty casinos?
Lutetic’s ‘21’ isn’t complex movie making – but that’s half the fun of being taken on a hedonistic, great looking journey. If you can handle 120 minutes of slick cinema, which simply add glamour and body to a true story – you’re in for a treat with 21. The only people unlikely to enjoy this spring’s jackpot movie are casino bosses and cynical movie critics!