Cynical Cinema

There was a made-for-TV movie about the MIT students that took Vegas for millions of dollars at the blackjack tables a few years ago.  Try as I might, I can’t seem to find it now.  I believe it was Canadian.  It was being shown on the movie network this year, and it was pretty good.  It dealt with the same true story as 21, based on the book “Bringing Down the House”.  In fact, it was virtually the same movie as 21.  The only difference between the two movies is that 21 has better production values and a more well-known cast.  Kevin Spacey stars as the teacher at MIT who recruits a bunch of math geniuses to form a team that is ready to take Las Vegas for millions at the blackjack tables.

That team consists of Jim Sturgess, the smartest-of-the-smart, who is the last member recruited for the team.  Also Kate Bosworth, the hottest-girl-on-campus, and also Liza Lapira, Jacob Pitts and Aaron Yoo.  While the story deals with such themes as gambling addiction, the corruptive influence of Las Vegas, the ego clashes between team members, the modernization of Vegas and the shunting aside of the old guard, the questionable relationship between a teacher and his students, and of course the concept of “who your true friends are”.  But it deals with each of these themes so superficially that you already know how every moment of this movie will play out.

Every character is so obvious that it becomes clear within their first two minutes of screen time exactly how they will turn out.  The story arc of Jim Sturgess as Ben, the smartest kid on the team, is the only one that really gets fleshed out in the movie, but every moment of it is totally conventional film.  He joins the team to make money so he can go to Harvard med school.  (Although why someone with this kind of math genius would want to become a doctor is never explained.  It’s like they just figure “doctor” is the smartest thing someone can be.)  He gets sucked in by the allure of Vegas and money, and leaves his true friends behind!  And eventually gets out of control and his world comes crashing down…and so on and so forth.  I think we’ve all seen this a thousand times before.

The only character with some mystery is that of Kate Bosworth, who is either a femme fatale, luring Ben into this world of fast money and fast women, or she’s an innocent ingenue who also becomes corrupted by the influence of Vegas, OR she’s the only character who maintains her moral centre throughout the film.  Even after the movie ended, I was still not sure which one of these characters she really was.  But in the end, that wasn’t because the film makers wanted to give her that sense of mystery, but rather it’s because her character is so badly written that she actually is all of these contradictory things.  Bosworth is OK as an actress, but she isn’t quite comfortable in a role where no one (including Bosworth) really knows where her character is going in the movie.

21 is slick, polished and totally surface-deep.  Even the really interesting characters (like Laurence Fishburne as a casino security pro) get slicked-over, caricature treatment.  Which means that as far as brainless entertainment goes, 21 is pretty good.  It’s so smooth and polished that it gleams.  And many people who want to just sit back and enjoy a movie without thinking at all will enjoy that.  The problem I have with it is that this is a movie about the smartest math geniuses in the world, and an incredibly complex card-counting scheme, and yet the movie never makes an attempt to itself be smart.