Kate Bosworth and Jim Sturgess in “21.”
Robert Luketic’s “21” tells the mostly true story about young mathematics wizards who formulated a fail-safe way to beat the tables in Las Vegas. It is a fun and exhilarating ride with predictable twists, but great visuals and a solid young cast answering to ringleader Kevin Spacey helps “21” deal out a good story.
Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess) is a hard-working Massachusetts Institute of Technology student. But the stresses of financing an Ivy League education are starting to wear at him. He works afternoons at a suit shop, which will hardly put a dent in the $300,000 it will cost to enroll in Harvard Medical School, and he spends free time with buddies Miles (Josh Gad) and Cam (Sam Golzari) trying to build a better robot.
Then opportunity knocks when professor Mickey Rosa (Kevin Spacey) sees real genius in Ben. The teacher is running an after-hours team of card counters, using mathematical principles to win at blackjack. Along with his dream girl Jill (Kate Bosworth) and fellow players Choi (Aaron Yoo, “Disturbia”), Fisher (Jacob Pitts) and Kianna (Liza Lapira), Ben starts living the high life on weekend junkets to Las Vegas, where they clean up at the tables and party until Sunday night. The only hitch is a security expert (Laurence Fishburne) who gets wise to the team’s system.
As a trustworthy document of how the fabled MIT blackjack team raked in the chips at Vegas, “21” feels like a bluff — and it is. Based on Ben Mezrich’s “Bringing Down the House,” which gave the players pseudonyms, “21” extrapolates even further, fictionalizing the key card counters and bringing their early ’90s reality into the present day, where they can wear Paul Smith suits and guzzle energy drinks between exhaustive, all-night rounds at the tables.
But that’s hardly the film’s point. Luketic (“Legally Blonde”) makes this story fun; “21” gets straight to the high-flying fantasy, the menace, the betrayals and the romance, and it all flows like the fountains at the Bellagio.
Spacey is great in the iconic Kevin Spacey role (a snide but erudite leader who cannot be trusted). He’s a welcome presence as an evil den mother for a group of young high rollers taking Vegas for stacks of cash.
Sturgess does most of the heavy lifting; he is in nearly every scene, and his charisma helps make Ben Campbell a sympathetic and relatable character. This might be a low-stakes drama, but “21” ups the ante on pure fiscal fantasy.