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21 (2008)

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158 comments in total

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109 out of 141 people found the following comment useful :-
"Winner Winner Chicken Dinner", 28 March 2008

Author: Lechuguilla from Dallas, Texas

Slick camera work and some good performances rev up the technical quality of this fact-based story about a 21 year old MIT student named Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess) who, along with his brainy Ivy League chums, travels to Vegas to win tons of money at the blackjack tables. Their sleazy math professor, Micky Rosa (Kevin Spacey), leads the group. Rosa has devised an elaborate and conspiratorial card counting scheme that consists of code words and hand gestures. With all that preparation, the group's scheme does work ... for a while. And in the process, the shy, cautious Ben, who only wants the money for tuition costs, morphs into his alter ego, a person quite unlike his original self.

The film's pace starts off leisurely, then alternates between fast-paced Vegas casino action and periods of downtime wherein Ben and his girlfriend, fellow conspirator Jill (Kate Bosworth), talk shop and take in the high life. The story does have a villain, but it may not be who you think it is.

The script's dialogue is snappy and hip, and contains minimal tech jargon. "Variable change" is one such math term, and it has thematic implications toward the end, as the story twists and turns in ways that may surprise you. And "winner winner, chicken dinner" is the group's lingo for gambling success.

Production design is realistic and lavish; this is a big budget film. Color cinematography, by DP Russell Carpenter, is polished and slick. There are lots of elaborate camera dissolves and close-ups. The best parts of the film are the close-ups of the characters at the blackjack tables. Film editing coincides with plot pacing, and ranges from slow to super fast. Acting is all-around good. Kevin Spacey gives his usual topnotch acting job; Sturgess and Bosworth also give fine performances.

It's not a perfect film. Background music was noisy and rather nondescript for my taste. And I could have wished for more card playing, and less time spent on Ben's college buddies in the first Act; the result is that the film gets off to a slow start. Still, the script is credible, and stays close to its book source "Bringing Down The House" by Ben Mezrich.

Thematically relevant in today's world of greed and materialism, "21" is a terrific film, one that has greater import than other films, because the events in "21" really happened. And the fine performances and polished visuals enhance the overall look and feel, to create a film that is both engaging and entertaining.

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52 out of 72 people found the following comment useful :-
Nothing new, but it's worth the watch, 3 April 2008

Author: Kristine (kristinedrama14@msn.com) from Chicago, Illinois

21 is definitely the major film for the spring time, it has young hot actors, including an incredible academy award winner, Kevin Spacey, and another great actor who's head looks like it grew quite a bit bigger, Lawarence Fishburne. So it has all the key ingredients for a good movie, a decent plot, over all a good combination of actors, and looks like a well put together movie. So I saw it this weekend and I have to say that I was a little disappointed, I think this movie was more for the teenagers, with the actors and the rating, I think it should've been more adult. It was a typical rise and fall story with cliché'd characters. Kevin Spacey, seriously my favorite actor, he's always a dead on hit with every role he takes on, but he seemed to just sleep his way through the film and didn't really care about it. He and new and hot up-comer, Jim Sturgess were not a bad couple on screen, but were not strong enough to hold the story into something original.

Basically we have Ben Campbell who needs $300,000 for Harvard Med. School, he's extremely gifted with numbers, so when his professor, Micky Rosa notices his gifts, he invites Ben with a group of his other students to go to Vegas and play 21. But there is a way to beat the game apparently, by counting cards. Ben promises up and down that it is just for school, but of course when he gets so hot, he takes it way further and ends up making a huge mistake and gets caught with some nasty security guards you don't wanna mess with.

Now 21 has decent enough acting, the movie itself is decent, I didn't mind at all watching it. For the most part, it's the young group of students that keep the movie interesting and keeps your attention. My main problems are for example about the characters Ben and Jill hooking up, I seriously doubt that would happen for real, but for the movie, they want these two hotties to get together at least for the teenage audience's sake. Also supposedly the group says they have to stay on the down low in Vegas so they don't get caught, yet they go around Vegas buying all these new clothes, clubbing, drinking, etc. 21 is worth the watch, but to be honest, if you're reading this, wait for the rental, it's just a regular rise and fall story.

6/10

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108 out of 184 people found the following comment useful :-
much better than you would expect!!, 5 February 2008

Author: madciderhead-1 from United Kingdom

I was lucky enough to see this film for free at a special screening in greater London as part of a market research by the film industry. even though it was free i would have paid good money to see that film. but I was presently surprised about how good the film was and everyone seemed to agree that the film was really good. I thought it made the card playing parts actually riveting even though i am not a card player myself. i thought the acting performances were all good especially that of Kevin Spacey's. In terms of the story. In many ways it reminded me of all the good things that was in the BBC TV show hustle. But in a much more real way. On the down side, you may see the ending coming and there is a romance part of the film that feels unnecessary. However it is a very slick film that gets away with it. I would say that it clearly the best film in this genre of film. I enjoyed it more than films such as Confidence and the Oceans 11 type films. I would highly recommend it to anybody when it eventually comes out in April!! I would have thought that they would cut down and re-edit it a bit on the basis that it was quite long. however it kept my attention for the whole film and that is not something that is also done during these sorts of films

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37 out of 44 people found the following comment useful :-
Not The Movie It Could Have Been, 31 March 2008

Author: CalifDude from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

This movie was based on a true story, and if the makers had stuck closer to the true story it could have been a much better movie. But no, they had to Hollywoodize it and dumb it down so that anyone with the least knowledge of the game of blackjack and how casinos operate will be saying "No way" to themselves all through the movie. It actually ends up with a chase scene and characters running through the kitchen, for God's sake.

In real life the team's success was 90% in being careful to not attract the attention of the casinos detectors and only 10% in their scheme, which was based on the well-known technique of card-counting to get an edge. In the movie, the team's actions were childishly crude even to the point of continually returning to the same casino...so the movie makers could develop the characters of the casino bad guys. In real life the team was careful to not win much at any one table or at any one casino, not more than $1,000 a session, which would be well within the amount any lucky player might win without counting. In the movie they hit the same table for tens of thousands of dollars, which would have set off alarms all over Nevada. Even the hand signals the team used in the movie were childishly obvious. All this by the supposedly brilliant MIT students and professor. No way.

The movie actually had the bad casino guys torturing card counters when they caught them. No way. In real life a casino has the right, tested in court, to kick anyone out and ban them from ever playing again...they do not have to prove cheating or card-counting, they do it under the laws of trespassing on their private property and this is what they do. Remember, card-counters are only making what amounts to an hourly wage, so they are not a serious threat to a casino.

Another example of the Hollywood treatment was that after showing how brilliant Ben was at counting cards when they were recruiting him, he was not used as the card counter, he was used as the big bettor and one of the female team members did the counting.

an entertaining movie for someone not knowledgeable or much interested in real life casino gambling, but dumb and dumber for those who are.

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61 out of 98 people found the following comment useful :-
21 Leaves out Elements of the Book, Adds New Excitement, 26 March 2008

Author: waltboyisme102 from United States

After Reading Ben Mezrich's "Bringing Down the House", upon which this movie is based, I was excited to the movie. I am usually let down by movies that are based on books, but that was not the case this time.

Although there were a handful of cliché parts of the movie, all in all it was excellently done. The visual effects were well done, and the acting on the part of Jim Sturgess, Kevin Spacey, and Kate Bosworth, was exemplary. Some people may criticize Spacey for his 'gusto', but I believe his portrayal of Mickey was stellar.

The movie had suspense, a solid plot line, scattered funny scenes, and a good ending. The people I went with, none of whom had read the book, found it an even better movie than I did. If you like the movie enough, I recommend reading the book for a more complete story.

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54 out of 88 people found the following comment useful :-
Winner Winner, Chicken Dinner, 1 April 2008

Author: GermanDragon from United States

There are many stories about success based on hard-work and perseverance. There have also been many stories about success based on crime and abandonment of the law. Both of these scenarios can make for great movies -- but when a movie like 21 comes out, it's both great AND fresh. 21 is a movie about success based on locking in on a hole in the system, and exploiting it.

Card counting is legal, and anyone able to do so can take the house's edge away in a game of blackjack. That is the basic premise of 21: A team of intelligent students at MIT structure a team to make vast amounts of money at the blackjack table. They have everything down pat, from the counting to the signals to alert of suspicious casino workers (because if you can believe it, casinos don't like to lose money in such high amounts.) The movie portrays the situation stylishly, perfectly blending in montages and effective music when necessary. Add in some Hollywood "embellishment" such as a particularly harsh head of security (Laurence Fishburne), and you have the making of a good movie on your hands.

It is disappointing that the production team felt the need to re-assign the races of the actual MIT Team (of which the majority was Asian), but that's more of an issue of ethics and sociology. Don't let it ruin a perfectly good movie. Aside from this blunder, 21 is an excellent film.

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29 out of 40 people found the following comment useful :-
Entertaining but very cliché., 21 April 2008

Author: Cocacolaguy912-2 from United States

21 is worth seeing on a restless Friday or Saturday night with friends, but it isn't anything more than that. The film features nice performances from actors Kevin Spacey and Laurence Fishburne, as well as nice entries from the lesser known ensemble.

However, it doesn't take a film expert to notice some of the more...awful lines. "That's is impressive software."...come on, seriously? Just bad writing.

And the flow of the plot is painfully cliché, up until the end where things are admittedly pretty unpredictable. The ending was unexpected, but it worked and made up for earlier plot points that were predictable.

"21" is entertaining, that's it. Nothing more, nothing less.

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48 out of 80 people found the following comment useful :-
Not so much like the book or the real-life story but a terrific movie!, 27 March 2008

Author: rhstoo from United States

I had the really cool opportunity to see an advance screening of "21" tonight. Having read the book when it first came out, I was a bit skeptical about whether it would translate well. I couldn't have been more pleased. Was it the same as the book? Of course not (except for The Green Mile, what was?) But it was action-packed, smart, fun, well-acted, well-directed, and just plain enjoyable. Spacey, Fishburne, and Bosworth are at the top of their games and Jim Sturgess is going to be a star. The visuals were great, the editing sharp, and the score right on point. I don't know whether to stay up all night re-reading the book or hop on a plane for Las Vegas to try to win while I still halfway remember the counting system. I enjoyed this as much as any light fare I have seen in a long time. I love George Clooney, but "21" is an order of magnitude better than any of the "Oceans" movies.

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43 out of 72 people found the following comment useful :-
Good, but not Great, 9 March 2008

Author: JustCuriosity from Austin, TX

This film screened at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, TX. It is a reasonable well-made based-on-a-true-story film that tells the story of a group of MIT students who attempt to make a fortune counting cards in Vegas. The screenplay apparently plays pretty fast-and-loose with the version told in the book. Never-the-less, the acting is excellent - especially Jim Sturgess in the role of the lead student. Honestly, his accent was so good that I didn't realize - until he came on stage afterward - that he was British. He does a great job with the mannerisms to give you a real sense of the character's evolution. Kevin Spacey and Laurence Fishburne are solid - although Fishburne's role is fairly small. The minor characters are not as well-developed as they could have been. The cinematography of both Boston and Las Vegas is quite good, especially on the big screen. It's an interesting story, but they could have edited down a bit to make it move a little quicker. This is a good film, but it probably could have been a lot better.

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15 out of 18 people found the following comment useful :-
Doesn't even work as a fairytale, 1 April 2008

Author: Rogue-32 from L A.

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

I was intrigued by the preview of 21 because I'm a sucker for films about gambling, and this is a film about gambling ~ it's the director/writers gambling with our intelligence, hoping we're completely devoid of brainpower, which would make us stupid enough to buy any of the claptrap we see on screen in this bonafide turkey.

The beginning is good, it's only when the true fun should be starting - when Ben starts going to Vegas as part of the blackjack team headed by Micky (Kevin Spacey) - that the movie begins to seriously fall apart.

Vegas is a huge town, with literally hundreds of casinos, but these clowns wind up going back to the SAME casino, over and over, using the SAME signals to one another (their ridiculous signal to indicate a hot table, for instance), until it's more than blatantly obvious to the security overseer, Laurence Fishburne, that these stooges are playing a very dangerous - and stupid - game.

The story then continues on its deathtrail of stupidity, with the storyline and the characters' behavior becoming more and more ridiculous until Ben - duhhhh - loses Everything and has to - double duhhhh - find a way to outsmart Micky (a 2-year-old could outsmart this guy) and get his life back together. The way it's done is even stupider than what proceeds it, what with Ben luring Micky back to the SAME casino for one last shot at the Big Money. "They'll know us there," Micky says, "So we'll have to wear disguises." Oh yeah, genius - a cowboy hat and fake mustache really make Spacey look like a totally different person (not), and even stupider --- they show up using the SAME signals that they've used all along; yes, these giboneys are that dumb.

Then, to insult the audience even further, the writers tack on what they believe, in their deluded states, to be a double surprise ending. By this time, the only surprise is that anyone is still left in the movie theatre.

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