Reader's Review: 21

By Kellvin Chavez on August 13, 2007

Reader Salvador Sanchez sent us his thoughts on the upcoming Black Jack movie called “21” starring Kevin Spacey, Laurence Fishburne, Kate Bosworth, Aaron Yoo and Jim Sturgess.

"21" is the fact-based story about six MIT students who were trained to become experts in card counting and subsequently took Vegas casinos for millions in winnings.

Here is what “Salvador Sanchez” tells us:

Lite spoilers...
 
Hola!
 
Longtime fan of the site.  Great stuff!  You locos are the best.  I caught a test screening here at the AMC Woodland Hills on Thursday for a movie called 21.  The stars in it are hottie Kate Bosworth (Lois Lane from Superman Returns) who plays Jill, Kevin Spacey as an MIT math instructor named Mickey Rosa and Laurence Fishburne as Cole Williams, an old school casino security guy.  The movie is based on the book - Bringing Down The House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T Students Who Took Vegas for Millions.
 
Our hero is Ben Campbell played some new guy named Jim Sturgess.  He is an aspiring doctor who is about to graduate MIT and go to Harvard Medical but there is a problem, he is one of 76 students up for some scholarship at Harvard and his chances are slim.  Either he gets the scholarship or he has to pay 300k to go to Harvard Medical.  He is your average nerd who hangs out with his friends Kameron and Miles who are building a some sort of self driving robot in their spare time and hang out at the neighborhood college bar and ponder how pathetic they are that they can't get girls.
 
Ben razzle dazzles his math instructor in class (Spacey's character).  Impressed, Mickey recruits Ben to join a blackjack club made up of other students including Jill, whom Ben has the hots for.  Jill goes to Ben's job at some clothing store convincing Ben to join and give it a try.  Ben's mind is like a Pentium computer and his talent is numbers.  Ben joins the blackjack card counting team.  Ben is in only until he makes 300k.  After that he is out.  That never happens though.
 
After a quick training with his team at a local Chinese gambling parlor, Ben and his team are ready to go.  The oriental kid from Disturbia is one of the team members and hilarious.  Another guy named Fisher is on the team who is the hater of the group and jealous of Ben.
 
We are also introduced to Laurence Fishburne's character Cole, who beats the crap out of a card counter at a casino.  We know that Cole and Ben are obviously going to run each other down the road.
 
The whole second half of the film is Ben's rise to be the man in Vegas, the alienation of his two friends back home, his eventual romance with Jill, and Ben's downfall.  All predictable. He gets the money, he gets the girl, he gets more money than he ever wanted, well beyond the 300k and he becomes an asshole.  He has his eventual run in with Cole, he is betrayed by Kevin Spacey, his money gets stolen...basically Ben loses it all.  Or so it seems until he comes back and the movie has got a good twist.  The film has a satisfying ending.
 
The performances are great and Spacey's character is the standout.  Haven't seen Spacey in a slimy role in some time.  Bosworth is absolutely gorgeous in this - better than she looked in Superman Returns.
 
The crowd seemed to be really into it and clapped at the end.
 
I thoroughly enjoyed the movie.  You can tell it’s an early cut with temp music and graphics.  The whole opening was pre-digitized.  Robert Luketic who did Legally Blonde and J-Lo’s last hit Monster In Law directed the film.  21 comes out next year.  Gonna check out the book, which it is based on.
 
If you use this, you can call me Salvador Sanchez (the name of one of the fake aliases in the movie!)

Source:Salvador Sanchez

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