moviereview

	An MIT professor trains students to take on Vegas and beat the system. Based on a true story.	score 2	moviereview rates films from 1 (unwatchable) to 5 (unmissable)
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Cast
Jim Sturgess, Kevin Spacey, Kate Bosworth, Laurence Fishburne, Jacob Pitts

Director
Robert Luketic

Screenwriter
Peter Steinfeld
Allan Loeb

Country
USA

Rating / Running Time
M / 123 minutes

Australian Release
May 2008

Official Site

Inspired by events in which five MIT students took on Vegas, one can’t help wonder how much of this ‘true story’ was left on the cutting room floor. This whimsical entertainment from Robert Luketic (Legally Blonde) has enough energy to gloss over head-scratchers, the details of which we needn’t visit here. Suffice to say that if this telling of the story is in any way related to reality, or the source novel, Vegas is run by the American Council of the Blind.

Ben (Jim Sturgess) is an A-grade, financially impoverished student with his hopes set on Harvard. When Professor Micky Rosa (Kevin Spacey) notes his memory for maths, he enlists him into The Team, a group of students trained to beat blackjack tables in Vegas. Ben has the talent to make a lot of money and realise his dream, if he doesn’t stray from the path.

21’s tension point rests with the illegal activity of Rosa’s mod squad. Will they or won’t they be caught by Laurence Fishburne, head of security who roughly introduces wayward gamblers to the line, as he has with Micky many, many times. The problem for audiences is two-fold. Firstly, Luketic fails to clarify The Team’s complex process by which they cheat and secondly, to explain why it’s illegal in the first place. Such absences soon reduce the story to a glitzy, noisy hybrid of Casino and Oceans 21, as it were.

Pitched young with an attractive cast, Sturgess (Across the Universe) is a pleasing foil for the reliable Spacey, 21 is a good match for an undemanding beer and pizza audience. Others may find stodgy pacing, laboured development, murky lighting and intrusive score simply plays as a dud hand.

// COLIN FRASER