Wanna do anything to have everything?!
Money, job, sex, friends? Name it.
The movie strike a chord that one can't have everything at one shot
rather
strike chances one at a time, exceptionally gifted or not.
But taking risks is not that too uncertain.
Taking lesson: How to follow all the "rules" and end up with zero
Movie Rating: 4.5/5 stars
GRANDMASTERSON / FORUMER
2 comments:
21: IMPLAUSIBLE
LOOSELY adapted from the Ben Mezrich best-seller, “Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions”, “21” stars very promising Brit actor Jim Sturgess (“Across the Universe”, “The Other Boleyn Girl”) in his Hollywood movie debut. He plays Ben Campbell, a brilliant MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) student who just turned 21 and dreams of going to Harvard Medical School. But it would cost him $300,000 to be a doctor and, since he doesn’t have that kind of money, he wants to get the coveted Robinson scholarship the school offers.
The school authority interviewing Ben says he needs to have a dazzling experience to impress them so he can win the scholarship, but Ben leads quite a humdrum life. That is, until his math professor, Mickey Rosa (Kevin Spacey, Lex Luthor in “Superman Returns”), is awed by his expertise in numbers and invites him to join an elite group of smart students who cheat by counting cards in the casinos in Vegas. Ben initially turns down the offer but one of the students in the group is Jill (Kate Bosworth, Lois Lane in “Superman Returns”) and he has long nurtured a big crush on her. Jill personally shows up at the clothes shop where he works and tells him he can raise the money he needs for medical school if he’d join their group. He said he’ll stop playing as soon he has saved enough money for his studies.
He goes to their secret meetings and is trained how to count cards and memorize hand signals that can make them win. So every weekend, they leave the cold wintry city of Boston to see the dazzling lights of the Sin City that is Vegas. Mickey says they’re not gambling but it’s just a business of counting cards. But Ben’s entry into their group results into some complications.
A team member who used to be their star, Fisher (Jacob Pitts), gets jealous of Ben who becomes the new team leader. Ben and Jill eventually fall in love. Ben himself becomes greedy even if he had already saved more than $300,000 stacked in the ceiling of his dorm room. He used to be quite shy, but he quickly becomes an asshole even to his nerdy friends, Miles (Josh Gad) and Cam (Sam Golzari) with whom he was earlier doing a robotics experiment that can make them win in a school competition. But his days as a high roller soon become numbered when he becomes the target of the head of a casino security, Cole Williams (Laurence Fishburne), who is also after Mickey’s neck.
Director Robert Luketic (“Legally Blonde”, “Monster in Law”) and his screenwriters have fictionalized the story, getting only the core idea of MIT students putting one over Vegas casinos through a card-counting scheme. This is not surprising since the real lead character in the book, Jeff Ma, has criticized the book itself, saying that various facts indicated in the book did not happen at all, especially the importance given to the role of the professor.
That movie review was taken from Peoples Tonight. Written by Mario E Bautista.
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