21

Bringing Down the House is the best-selling novel by Ben Mezrich and chronicles the story of six M.I.T students who mastered the art of card counting and in the process took Vegas for millions of dollars. It also happens to be the latest, larger than life story that’s been transformed into a movie. The movie being 21, which unfortunately takes everything that was interesting about the card-counting students’ story, puts it through the Hollywood filter and ends up becoming something really mediocre.

Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess) is a student who is at the top of his class at M.I.T and is about to move on to bigger and better things as he prepares to go to Harvard Med. The only problem being that he hasn’t figured out how he’ll be able to pay the huge tuitions fees, and despite his impressive academic record it seems he lacks any ‘dazzle’ to be able to earn a scholarship. That may sound like a huge hill to climb, but thankfully one of Ben’s professors is Micky Rosa (Kevin Spacey), who moonlights as a coach for a team of student card-counters. The team spends their weekends putting their skills to work in Las Vegas. Ben earns a spot on the team, but as you would expect, it ends up causing him a lot more problems.

I was really disappointed with 21. With such an interesting story to draw from it should have definitely made for a better movie, it was one oft hose cases where the story was there, but just completely mishandled. For starters, the whole movie feels like one big dumbed down version of what really happened, constantly moving along at a fast pace, and never slowing down to actually tell a decent story. It’s the perfect example of a movie with more flash than substance.

To make matters worse, the entire ‘team’ is made up of a bunch of misfits that you can’t even root for. One of which is a kleptomaniac, the other a giant hot head, and Ben ends up stuck in the middle of it all trying, also, to deal with a half-baked romance plot involving Kate Bosworth. To top it off you have Kevin Spacey, who turns in one of the worst performances of his career, leading them into battle. Not really the group of people I want to watch for two hours take down Vegas. You end up rooting for the casinos.

The other major flaw with this flick lies with the running time. Much like most of the characters in 21, the movie doesn’t know when to quit and drags on far too long. Twenty minutes or so probably could have been cut. There a couple needless scenes and about two too many musical montages. Its also one of those movies where it feels like its dragging on even more than it really is because you know exactly where its headed.

The movie’s only enjoyable moments come from Laurence Fishburne, who plays Cole Williams, a security consultant for the casinos who is hot on the trail of Ben and his hooligans. When ever Fishburne is on screen it feels like a completely different movie. His character is living in another era, one that feels a lot like old-school Vegas cool, the same kind of cool that the rest of 21 desperately tries to imitate, but fails miserably.

Overall, the true story which 21 is based off of is a lot more interesting than what is presented on screen. You’re better off skipping it and just reading Bringing Down the House.