A group of MIT students utilize their means of deduction on the blackjack tables in Sin City in the movie 21. Ben Campbell is a brilliant MIT student hoping to land a scholarship to Harvard’s medical school, because money is the only thing standing between Ben and the Ivy League school. His chance at landing the scholarship is slim, and Ben isn’t making nearly enough working at a fine men’s clothing store. Luck may have just turned Ben’s way, when he is recruited to join a secret blackjack club at MIT, composed of fellow students and run by a professor. The group develops a system of counting cards, and codes, and with their team system in place, they’re able to make tens of thousands of dollars at Vegas’s finest casinos.
This wild fantasy of MIT students going from honor students to high stakes hustlers is the kind of story built for Hollywood. 21 is based on the real-life story of Ben Campbell, a 20-something MIT student, who finds the art of counting cards to be a lucrative enterprise. Although based on actual events, 21 wisely, or should I say fairly, never eludes to the fact that it is based on a true story. This a calculated and rational decision by director Robert Luketic, since I presume several liberties were taken with characters and events involved. By skirting the factual aspects, 21 can simply serve as escapist fun, a sometimes thrilling, often engaging romp where fair-minded college students turn into major Vegas players. The performances are standard, but deliver enough realism to overcome the inadequacies in the screenplay. One of these inadequacies has the brilliant Ben stashing hundreds of thousands of dollars in his dorm room’s drop ceiling, instead of several other safe spots. A wizard with mathematics, odds and probability, one would think Ben could have deducted the probability of these riches being stolen from his ceiling as opposed to a high security bank. This qualm aside, 21 delivers a fairly entertaining, and mainly forgettable thriller.
Grade: B-
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