nan | 楠木

21 tells the story of the MIT blackjack team, or rather, a fairly fictional story loosely based on that source material. Reading up Wikipedia, it seems the real-life story is far more intriguing than what this film has to offer, which again serves to prove that life is often larger than fiction.

Anyway – the film follows a gifted young MIT student Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess) who dreams of going to Harvard Medical School. He’s accepted, but he can’t afford the tuition, and the scholarship is intensely competitive. However his luck changes when his gift for logic and composure is spotted by a Prof. Micky Rosa (deftly played by Kevin Spacey), and he is subsequently recruited into a blackjack team, trained how to count cards, and travels to Vegas over the weekends to play it big against the casinos.

The most interesting element of the film is the methods of card counting. I actually paused the film to read up Wikipedia on card counting, and it’s quite an entertaining read if you’re somewhat interested in maths. The team in the film uses a simple Hi-Lo system, which assigns cards 2-6 a +1 value, 7-9 a 0 value, and 10-13 a -1 value. For each card dealt, the player adds the card’s assigned value to his/her existing count. The counting is not to remember individual cards, but rather what is ratio of higher value / lower value cards already dealt. So if the current count is a high positive number, that means there have been more lower value cards dealt, and the chances of being dealt a higher value card is higher, which is to the player’s advantage (higher chance of blackjack).

That’s the basic premise for the team, and their strategy is simple. They’re not in Vegas to gamble. They’re there to play a game of statistics, and if they follow the rules strictly, statistics will guarantee that they make money.

Of course, the whole point of gambling is that people get emotional and make stupid decisions, which is exactly what happens to the team. Even worse, there’s a hard hitting anti-counting investigator (Lawrence Fishburne) whose profession is becoming extinct (thanks to new computers that replace their jobs) and who is therefore extra eager to take down the team.

The plot is fairly standard for a thriller, with decent twists and turns and a good build-up to the climax. And the moral of the story is predictable: you get what you deserve, and there is no short-cut (i.e. gambling) to success.

Jim Sturgess is a upcoming actor, and this is the first film I’ve seen him in. His looks and acting style seem to be a mix of Jake Gyllenhaal and Tobey Maguire, and he could be an interesting actor to watch out for. Kate Bosworth plays the female attraction, and is mildly interesting. Kevin Spacey plays the same smartass role he’s played in so many other films, but is still enjoyable to watch. And Lawrence Fishburne doesn’t have enough time to build his character beyond a simple muscle-man with an iron determination.

7/10