Prof. Micky Rosa (Kevin Spacey) pulls together a team of students to beat the Vegas casinos at blackjack (aka. 21) by running a simple team card counting system. Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess), a promising MIT student, who becomes very visible in the Prof’s math lecture, receives an invitation into this profiting math club. Ben and the rest of the squad go through a semester of life in Vegas every Saturday/Sunday and then the rigours of MIT school life during the Mon-Fri, while trying not to let the cat out of the bag that they make from five to two hundred thousand dollars every weekend.

This movie is the best card film since Rounders. Rounders was an awesome movie because it didn’t try to dramatize the cards, but rather paid attention to the drama of what was happening with the card players, and this is what 21 does.

The movie is a story of Ben coming into this world of high stakes and huge risks of being caught. The story also had extra depth where we can see the changes in the attitude of Ben, which we expect from most gamblers. Ben enters the business with a goal, but changes completely into where his MIT life comes second to his Vegas life, and he doesn’t want to leave, and throws all goals out the window and just wants more and more wins and money.

This movie is very entertaining, it reminds me of Rounders and Ocean’s Eleven mixed together in a martini shaker for about ninety minutes, except this is a true story. I read somewhere that people found the premise for this movie is too ridiculous. Is it ridiculous to think that people can count cards? Is it ridiculous that someone would want to go to a top notch school who cannot afford to pay the huge fees? Is it ridiculous that someone gambles to pay their way through school? NO!!! And again, how can this be ridiculous when a film like Speed Racer exists where there is a scene in which a driver pops the car in the air as another car is flipping over him and he smacks the other driver across the face in mid-air? 21 is based on a true story and I don’t think they strayed too far from the truth. Or, let me say that when I saw the trailer, I immediately remembered hearing about the real story when it happened, and I thought they would throw the story way out of proportion. However, I was nowhere near correct, everything seems very plausible and enjoyable.

Personally I loved so many parts of this movie. I loved that they made the system seem so easy to learn and use, because it is. As long as you have a good memory and can count off cards as they leave the deck; you can count cards. Other than memory all you need to do is add and minus by one in order to count cards. I loved that they took into account the casino security, Vegas at the time was being taken over by computer technology and there is still one man who runs the old school personal detection where former card counters are out there catching new card counters. In real casinos they use (not sure if they still do) to employ card counters to catch people counting cards. The truth of it is that for every hundred card counters that enter the casino about three can actually do it properly. I loved that the casino security was old school, in that it made me think of the Scorsese “Casino” where when they catch someone cheating they don’t only make sure they don’t play anymore at their casino, but also make sure they don’t forget why. I loved the Ocean’s Eleven moment of the film, not only because it makes you think entirely of Ocean’s Eleven but at that exact moment in the movie they are playing a song from the Ocean’s Twelve OST. That made me smile, and I love it when movies can just make me smile.

When you go to this movie don’t expect anything more than an entertaining life experience that will make you wish you had personally gone through it.

IMDB says 7.0/10
Rotten Tomatoes says 31%
I say 7.5/10