Bust

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 19:27:15 -0500

21

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 18:18:38 -0500

Runtime: 1 hr. 58 min.

Rating: PG-13 some violence, and sexual content including partial nudity

Cast: Jim Sturgess, Kevin Spacey, Kate Bosworth, Aaron Yoo, Liza Lapira, Jacob Pitts, Laurence Fishburne

Director: Robert Luketic

Writers: Peter Steinfeld and Allan Loeb

Genres: Psychological Thriller, Thriller

Yawn.

Hmm, things I’d rather do than sit through another screening of Robert Luketic’s 21.

Watch paint dry.

Um, watch my dog lick his balls.

Watch an earthworm make its way across a sidewalk before a sneaker drops out of the heavens, crushing its languid moving body.

21 is booooooooooooooooooring. Boring like sitting through a briefing on a Friday afternoon. Boring like you are watching Julia Child wipe herself.

Okay that may actually be kind of fun.

Based on the book, Bringing Down the House: The Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas For Millions, (which incidentally all 6 were Asian) this is basically an updated telling of Oliver Twist. Here, the likable Jim Sturgess plays Oliver and evil, sardonic Kevin Spacey is Fagin.

Ben Campbell (Sturgess) is a shy, brilliant M.I.T. student who scores grades most of us only dream of, hangs in bars with his nerd buddies Miles and Cam, and builds robots for science project. Ben has also been accepted to Harvard Med…that only costs $300,000. Ben’s part-time job at a haberdashery will help him reach his $300,000 goal.

By the time he’s 60.

Needing to pay for tuition, Ben is lured into an afterschool “math club” by his unorthodox math professor, Micky Rosa (Spacey) and the seductive Jill Taylor, played by Kate Bosworth (looking a little long in the tooth to play a college kid).

Micky convinces Ben to join a group of the school’s most gifted kids and head to Vegas. To take them for everything they got!

He plans, gives them signals, fake ids and is there to collect the money in a posh suite. By counting cards and employing an intricate system of signals, the team can beat the casinos big time.

Seduced by the money, the Vegas lifestyle, and Jill, innocent Ben begins to push the limits. He’s not counting cards anymore. He’s gambling. Oh no!

Take a pause for the dramatic music.

Though counting cards isn't illegal, the stakes are high, and the challenge becomes not only keeping the numbers straight, but staying one step ahead of the casinos' menacing enforcer: Cole Williams (Laurence Fishburne), not only hamming it up but looking like he ate the entire ham.

Well after suffering an hour or so through predictable scenes, snap zooms and dramatic over-cranked slow motion…oh wait there is nothing on the flip side but predictable scenes, snap zooms and dramatic over-cranked slow motion.

And a bad score!

Jim Sturgess is certainly likable enough. He plays Ben’s innocence just enough to be believable. But he does go over the top when he turns into evil Ben…who really isn’t that evil after all. I did question Ben’s smarts by the way he stored his cash. But if he didn’t store it where he did, we certainly wouldn’t have the obvious, see this as clear as Pam Anderson’s tits, plot point.

But I won’t blame Sturgess all the way. That I attribute to the pedestrian screenplay by Peter Steinfeld and Allan Loeb.

Also, Ben’s nerdy friends seem out of place here. I feel like they both walked off the set of Superbad or The Big Bang Theory for a couple of scenes. Fishburne hams it up nicely. Must’ve been an easy week of shooting for him. Damn, Morpheus has gotten big.

The best performance here belongs to Spacey, who is, unfortunately, not in 21 enough. The movie slams to a boring halt when he’s off-screen.

So if you really want to see dramatic gambling I suggest you turn on the flat screen and watch Celebrity Texas Hold’em. At least if it gets boring you can switch channels or go make a sandwich.

One and a half ball point pens.

BRAND SPANKIN' NEW | The Geek Movie Review

Bust

21