Beat the system

Blackjack is a game of chance: you have no idea whether the dealer's next card will push your score over 21, taking your pile of casino chips along with it. Unless, of course, you know exactly what’s left in the deck.

Impossible? Not if you're a group of brainy college kids with too much intelligence and free time; abetted by a less than scrupulous maths professor who likes gambling a lot more than trigonometry. Armed with his knowledge of how to beat the game — which involves card counting, secret code words, and an elaborate system of winks and scratches — you can head off to Vegas and make a killing.

Impossible? Not if you're a group of M.I.T. students who did just that in the '90s. '21' tells their story — sort of. Not a documentary, not even an instructional video, it's the sexed up Hollywood version. So the dorky geniuses just happen to look like movie star hotties (Kate Bosworth, 'Across the Universe' hunk Jim Sturgess); the operation's mastermind is a dead ringer for Kevin Spacey; the dialogue is almost as melodramatic as the inevitable bust-ups; there's an elaborate double cross that only Danny Ocean could pull off; and, is that perhaps a romance developing between our good looking leads?

But a bit of creative license (read: fantasy) is appropriate for a tale set in the city where nothing is real, and vital for adding some thrills to a story arc older than Vegas showbiz veterans Siegfried and Roy. Ben Campbell (Sturgess) is bright, handsome, but not exactly loaded. He's also a bit of a nerd — when not working as a sales assistant to earn money for med school, he's building a robot. His life takes a sudden turn, though, when his linear equations lecturer Mickey Rosa (Spacey) invites him to join a society. Screw chess club, they’re all about gambling.

Our hero initially resists (he's too honest) but is "encouraged" by the not unattractive Jill (Bosworth) to become one of the wannabe card sharks — of course only until he has enough money for his tuition…

It's not long though before the cash and wild weekends in Sin City — a complete contrast to the boring weeks back at college — have seduced Ben and he's transformed into a cool kid who now avoids his old geeky friends. Of course the house of cards comes tumbling down (courtesy of a rampant ego, jealousy and a veteran casino security consultant played by Laurence Fishburne) and our boy is left to consider what's happened to his life.

It’s a lack of originality only matched by the lack of logic. Why do the students, who are clearly told by Rosa to keep it cool, act like rock stars when they get to Vegas? How do the casino employees fall for the disguises (a hat here, some sunglasses there)? And why is Fishburne the only man in North America's gambling capital who cottons on to their arm-flailing techniques?

Impossible? It doesn’t really matter. For all director Robert Luketic's heavy-handedness (who'd have thought earning millions on the Strip is more exciting than attending lectures?) '21' is just like Vegas: bright, fun, and pretty tacky.