Stylish and well paced, 21 tells the story of a group of MIT brainiacs and their tutor who took on Vegas with their card counting scheme and made rich. For a group of math nerds they all look a little too Hollywood perfect, but then 21 glosses over the details of the math and presents an enjoyable feel good morality tale.
Fortunately the good looking kids don’t look out of place in Vegas, and knowing it’s all loosely based on reality makes the fantasy pill easier to swallow.
As far as the film as a whole goes, it manages to keep a couple of aces up it’s proverbial sleeves, the first being Kevin Spacey, who always creates a fine role, no matter the movie. It was Spacey being in the movie that, in my mind, made it a must see movie. The other ace came from Jim Sturgess who played the lead role of Ben, a 21-year-old student who gets sucked into the tutors schemes. He was more than capable of holding his own against the seasoned Spacey and made the whole movie a pleasure to watch.
Now 21 isn’t going to blow you away with action – it’s a human drama, coming of age story – but it is going to leave you happy you invested the time to watch it. It manages to subtly show the hypocrisy of Vegas, the addictive lure of money and the value of human friendship, and as the Rolling Stones proclaim as the credits roll:
“You can’t always get what you want; but if you try sometimes, you might just find you get what you need.”
Reviewed by: Jonathan Read. Rating: M – Contains Medium Level Violence. Duration: 123 mins. Genre: Drama. Director: Robert Luketic. Actors: Laurence Fishburne, Kate Bosworth, Kevin Spacey, Jacob Pitts, Aaron Yoo, Jim Sturgess, Liza Lapira. Distributor: Sony. Release Date: 22 October, 2008.
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