21 (Two-Disc Special Edition)
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Kate BosworthDVD: Region Code 99
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language); French (Dubbed); Spanish (Dubbed)
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.40:1
Running Time: 123 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-07-22
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Sony Pictures
Movie Reviews of 21 (Two-Disc Special Edition)
Movie Review: Based on a true story?
Summary: 3 Stars
The movie is based on a true story, but the plot is changed so much from the book, it is hardly recognizeable. The movie captures the excitement of the team counting cards in Vegas, but the characters are unbelievable. Kevin Spacey plays an vindictive professor who organizes the team. Spacey does a competent job, but the character's motivations are so over the top that it is unbelievable he's never been caught or he can keep his job as a professor at MIT. Sturgess plays a very smart student trying to make some money because he was accepted into Havard Med. School. The timeline is very confusing. Is the whole story a flashback? However, I thought the essay is what kicked the plot off. The love story is not very convincing or interesting. Also, these Vegas trips were business trips for these students. According to the accounts I read, they did not regularly go to strip clubs. They went on overnight trips. They did not have time to for all the partying in the movie.
The aspects of the movie I liked best was how they showed the signaling and card counting working. The gambling was done well. The scenes of college life was good.
In summary, it is not a horrible movie, but it could have been so much better. The real story is fascinating. The movie only partially generates that excitement.
Summary of 21 (Two-Disc Special Edition)
Inspired by the true story of MIT students who mastered the art of card counting and took Vegas casinos for millions in winnings. Looking for a way to pay for tuition, Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess) finds himself quietly recruited by MIT's most gifted students in a daring plot to break Vegas. With the help of a brilliant statistics professor (Kevin Spacey) and armed with fake IDs, intelligence and a complicated system of counting cards, Ben and his friends succeed in breaking the impenetrable casinos. Now, his challenge is keeping the numbers straight and staying one step ahead of the casinos before it all spirals out of control.An unconvincing exercise in moral complexity, 21 is based on Ben Mezrich's book Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions. Jim Sturgess (Across the Universe) plays brilliant, blue-collar scholar Ben Campbell, whose doubts that he'll win a scholarship to Harvard Medical School compel him to join a secret, M.I.T. gang of math whiz kids. Under the silky but chilling command of a math professor (Kevin Spacey), Jim and the others master card counting, i.e., the statistical analysis of cards dealt in blackjack games. The team lives a humdrum existence during the week, but on weekends in Sin City, the students are rolling in cash, going to exclusive clubs, and feeling on top of the world. (Ben even gets the girl: a comely, fellow counter played by Kate Bosworth.) Despite all that success, Ben feels ethically compromised, and indeed director Robert Luketic (Legally Blonde), in the old tradition of American movies, plays it both ways where fun vices are concerned. On the one hand, it feels so good; on the other, ahem, we know it's wrong. That studied ambivalence proves wearing after a while, making the most interesting character in the film a casino watchdog played by Laurence Fishburne. A master at reading the emotions of gamblers beating the house with a scam, he's admirable for being good at his job, but repellent for wrecking the faces of counters in casino dungeons. He's all about moral complexity in the tradition of anti-heroes, and a truly provocative element in an otherwise superficial movie. --Tom Keogh
Beyond 21
 On Blu-ray |  Read the book 21 was based on |  UMD for PSP |
Stills from 21 (click for larger image)
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