#143 - Movie Review: 21.

[reileen]

Title: 21.
Starring: Jim Sturgess, Kevin Spacey, Kate Bosworth, and Laurence Fishburne.
Also starring: Aaron Yoo and Liza Lapira representin' for Asian America, yo!
Rating: PG-13.
Plot (non-spoilery): Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess) is your average overachiever: 4.0 GPA at MIT, president of some high-falutin' academic club, newly-promoted assistant manager at a suit shop, working on a year-long robotics project with two best friends, and also looks like a younger version of Tom Cruise. He wants very desperately to get into Harvard Medical School, but of course he ain't got the dough to do so. By sheer luck, his nonlinear equations professor, Mickey Rosa (Kevin Spacey), notices Ben's aptitude with numbers, and convinces Ben to join up with a group of other MIT mathemagicians who visit Vegas every weekend with fake identities and a system of "counting cards" that allows them to beat the casinos at blackjack, and thus win big with the money. Counting cards isn't illegal...but you could get beaten up by a big scary black dude the casino's main enforcer (Lawrence Fishburne) for it anyway. The story of the film draws from a non-fiction book about the 1990s incarnation of the MIT Blackjack Team, Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich.
Review in short: A solid feel-good movie with a sympathetic lead and mostly interesting characters - though his love interest is so blandly whitebread that I wanted to pop her into a toaster and slather her with strawberry jam for a snack. (Sexual innuendos about eating Kate Bosworth need not apply: I only consider Bosworth pretty in a very generic sort of way.) The plot is a familiar one, revolving around how Ben copes with the curveballs that life throws his way once he gets too deep into the Vegas lifestyle. But there's a few small twists towards the end that, while they may not necessarily be "HOSHIT" worthy, they at least keep Ben's story from becoming too stale.
Grade: B.

Oh, man. I was going to write up this official, essay-ish review about how I thought the movie handled Ben's character, and the minor plot twists that came towards the end, and My Thoughts On the casting controversy that revolved around how Hollywood made this particular MIT team mostly white when in reality the team was mostly Asian, but I'm having a total brain freeze right now. I guess in some ways, there's really not much to say. I don't think I wasted my money on this movie, but at the same time I'm not sure that it'll stay with me. Well, okay, Yoo as the quirky kleptomaniac Choi was pretty funny, although I imagine that there's going to be some kerfluffling over how his character and Lapira's (lack of) character relate to the overall issue of portrayals of Asian-Americans in mainstream media.

There were a couple of things that had me shaking my head in disbelief, though.




1. Mickey Rosa was a scumball from the start. Even Ben's introduction to the blackjack team - consisting of someone from the team tracking him down in an empty study hall and telling him simply: "Hey, you're the smart kid. You have to follow me now" - was skeevy. And let's not even talk about how Ben had to visit a backalley gambling establishment in order to prove to the team that he was game material. Mickey seriously reeked of Eau de Cult Leader. My mantra throughout the movie during Mickey's appearances, repeated to mugging_hipster, was: "Wow, that's not suspicious at all. [/sarcasm]" I'm not sure that this is a complaint so much as an observation, though. I know that the writers had to foreshadow Mickey's eventual villainous role somehow, or else the revelation would've been a Deus Ex. I just think that they could have done with a little more subtlety about it near the beginning of things.

2. The casino enforcer, Cole Williams, apparently likes to beat the shit out of any card counters he catches at the blackjack tables. Wait, what? Seriously? I understand perfectly that this was intended to add an element of danger to what could have otherwise been a soap operatic story, but come on now. Getting beat up for cheating at a card game? You'd think Cole came from the mob or something! The only thing that keeps me from saying that the writers should've done something different was the fact that this aspect of Cole's character adds a sweet flavor of schadenfreude to the scene where Cole finally manages to corner Mickey in the interrogation basement thingy whatever.

3. When Ben returns to Jill (Kate Bosworth) after having been dragged off and beaten by Cole and his cronies, Jill's pissed that he didn't visit her earlier. What the fuck? It was Jill and the rest of the blackjack team that abandoned him when Cole dragged him off! Shouldn't she at least be apologizing to him for that before going all worried/pissed about the fact that he didn't let her know he was alive?




On a slightly tangential note, the previews for this movie showed a couple of intriguing ones coming up, namely:

1. Iron Man - Superhero flick where things go kablamafoo! Not familiar with the original comic, though.

2. Made of Honor - Romantic comedy thing. I'm usually not into romantic comedies, but the story revolves around how a guy realizes after a million-and-one-years (not really, but you get the picture) that he's in love with his longtime best friend, and that once she comes back from this trip to Scotland, he's going to confess to her and it'll be a Happily Ever After. Only, she comes back with a fiance and names the lead character as her Maid of Honor at this wedding. It's one of my favorite romantic storylines with potential crossdressing! How could I not go see this?!

3. You Don't Mess with the Zohan - An Israeli commando fakes his death in order to move to New York and become a hairstylist. Except that this Israeli is played by Adam Sandler. Yeah, um...yeah.

-Reileen
so tell me what you want, what you really really want