Ben Campbell must write a stunning essay to win a scholarship to Harvard Medical School.
The ace undergrad at the nearby Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the central character in “21,” Ben is already a shoo-in to be admitted. But this son of a Boston widow, played by Jim Sturgess, can’t swing the tuition.
“The scholarship will go to someone who dazzles,” says an Ivy League administrator. On his desk, a small nude figurine, head resting on a hand, reclines as if to say, “Go head, tell a tale that seduces me.”
** RATING | Drama
“21” is about seductions of the easiest sorts. This is its problem.
Loosely based on Ben Mezrich’s best seller, “Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who took Vegas for Millions,” the film is about a group of MIT students who used a very smart card-counting system to milk the casinos. But the movie blows off the deeper thrills of its source material to make a tidier, less compelling amorality play.
When Ben wows MIT professor Micky Rosa (Kevin Spacey), the teach begins some hard recruiting of the numbers savant for the card-counting team of brainiacs he wants to send to Las Vegas.
This contemporary mod squad (actors Kate Bosworth, Aaron Yoo, Liza Lapira, Jacob Pitts) role-play and then play. They return with hundreds of thousands stuffed into their undies, velcroed beneath their shirts.
Bosworth is Jill, the very bright daughter of a gambling addict, sent to convince good-looking but tentative Ben.
On the other side of the values seesaw sit Ben’s best buddies Miles and Cam (Josh Gad and Sam Golzari). The trio are at work on a project for a science prize when Ben folds.
At first, Ben isn’t interested in the scheme. Then he is. Then he’s in deep. Although card-counting isn’t illegal, casinos take a very dim, very muscular view of it.
And the film begins with his foreshadowing voice-over: “I have a gifted mind, and that’s what got me into this mess.”
Laurence Fishburne is Cole Williams, a dour casino security specialist driven by as dire a need as Ben: His old-school services are being phased out, replaced by biometrics-scanning technology. But can a string of computer code put rings on a fist and cold-cock-convince a guy into leaving Las Vegas? We didn’t think so.
Williams searches close-circuit feed for cheater-tells, counters signals and so forth. Eventually he sees something suspect in the nice young woman who folds her hands behind her back and the dark-haired guy who sidles up to the table. She bets modestly. He goes for the gusto.
When that becomes unwise, she or another spotter on the team will run a hand through her hair. Get out, now.
At its finest — too late in the third act to make it a bona fide winner — “21” is more chess match than blackjack showdown. Spacey and Fishburne’s characters treat Ben as a pawn in a long-standing rivalry. And the veteran actors trump the team of young performers in ways that suggest a stacked deck.
Spacey, who bought the rights to Mezrich’s book and is one of the film’s producers, exudes his typical onscreen confidence. Standing in front of his MIT students, Micky exhibits the performing prowess involved in good teaching. For a moment, he’s John Houseman’s high-and- mighty instructor of the “Paper Chase” for a new generation.
Only the paper being chased here is decidedly green.
“21”
PG-13 for some violence and sexual content including partial nudity. 1 hour, 58 minutes. Directed by Robert Luketic. Written by Peter Steinfeld and Allan Loeb. From the book “Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions,” by Ben Mezrich. Photography by Russell Carpenter. Starring Jim Sturgess, Kate Bosworth, Aaron Yoo, Liza Lapira, Jacob Pitts, Josh Gad, Sam Golzari, Kevin Spacey, Laurence Fishburne. Opens today at area theaters.
