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‘21’ counts many guilty pleasures
When I went to Las Vegas a few years back, I never even touched a game table, much less played a game of blackjack, but I didn’t need to - I marveled at the razzmatazz of the place, at how even the McDonald’s sign pulsed and glittered.
So when other critics carp that 21 is flashy, loud, exaggerated, shallow, and patently false, they’re right. But then, much of Vegas is all those things too - which is exactly why I found the movie highly entertaining.
The film is based on the best-selling novel Bringing Down the House, about how a half-dozen MIT students took Vegas for millions through an elaborate card-counting scheme. I knew going in 21 would be a slicked-up variation of the truth that concentrated little on the actual teamwork. That turned out not to be a problem thanks to energetic direction by Robert Luketic (Legally Blonde) and a highly charismatic cast.
Chief among them is Jim Sturgess, who impressively channeled Lennon and McCartney with equal aplomb in Across the Universe. That film will be remembered as the one that discovered him; 21 ought be the one that makes him a bona-fide star.
Sturgess plays Ben Campbell, an MIT student and genius at number-crunching. He makes his skills readily apparent in a class taught by professor Mickey Rosa (Kevin Spacey). With an alluring fellow student, Jill Taylor (Kate Bosworth), egging Ben on, he joins her on Rosa’s card-playing team determined to make a killing in Vegas.
Although the upstanding Ben has misgivings, he goes along with the plan for two reasons: to get closer to Jill and to earn just enough dough to pay his way through medical school at Harvard. It isn’t long, though, before the lure of Vegas seduces him. He goes from being a charming geek to one of the cool kids. The only thing is, nothing you win in Vegas - including a new social status - comes without a price.
To be sure, 21 stacks its decks with cliches aplenty. When the geek becomes a stud, he abandons his best geek buddies, who do everything but say “You’ve changed, man.” The god-like teacher turns out to have shady ulterior motives. The star player takes a dive, letting the promising rookie take the lead. The “villain,” a Vegas security chief (Laurence Fishburne) hates the high technology that has come to rule the town, and so forth.
However, formulas can be fun to watch as long as they’re mixed properly and they produce the right fizz. Sturgess anchors the movie extremely well, making Ben an utterly believable genius and a fool. Spacey, with his diabolical sarcasm cranked into overdrive, hasn’t been this much fun to watch since American Beauty. Bosworth exudes plenty of sex appeal, even if her romance with Sturgess never quite clicks. I believed the two of them could fall for each other, but their affair never goes anywhere; it feels more perfunctory than passionate.
Still, the most powerful allure of 21 is Vegas itself, and Luketic captures it well. Even when it made absolute sense for Ben to leave, I could see why he would lose his way with Luketic’s swooping camera and fast editing creating such a heady whirlpool of sin. Sure, it’s all preposterous nonsense, but it’s enthralling preposterous nonsense, even for this viewer who doesn’t gamble and hates math. That’s playing your cards right.
GRADE: B+
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By SRCputt
March 28, 2008 9:53 AM | Link to this
Yup. It’s a fun time at the movies. Nothing more than that, but sometimes, that’s enough.