Adapted from Ben Mezrich’s fairly entertaining book about six MIT students who won millions playing blackjack in Vegas, 21 has a concept good enough to make a movie that would be, at the very least, pretty fun. As we have all learned by now, and will further witness today, good concepts don’t always make for good movies.
Inspired by the true story to about the same extent that The Wackness is inspired by my life (and I’m not even talking about the white-washing), 21 wastes no time sucking. After a pre-title tease that serves no purpose other than to trick the audience into thinking they’re headed into something edgy with Jim Sturgess’ non-ironic narration of the phrase “Winner, winner, chicken dinner” and pointlessly set up the film’s half-assed flashback structure, we’re properly brought into the movie’s idiotic world.
Ben Campbell (Sturgess trying to play American but really just sounding dim) is an MIT student in need of $300,000 for Harvard Medical School and, of course, he probably won’t be getting the scholarship even though he is the ideal candidate. It is essential that the movie make us understand this, because otherwise there would be no moral ambiguity and the characters would run the risk of becoming vaguely interesting. Instead, we get a sloppily thrown together tale of a group of students and their “cool” mentor (Kevin Spacey phoning it in like he has been since L.A. Confidential) who runs an elaborate card counting group, created to take Vegas casinos for big bucks.
21 tries desperately to achieve the stylized hipness of Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s remakes, but never comes off as anything more than an idiot who thinks he’s cool. While the Ocean’s films are so fun because they radiate effortlessness, 21 is a chore to sit through because it tries too hard. Everything from the CG close-ups of cards to the stock characters (the smart guy, the babe, the cocky one, etc.) feels painstakingly calculated, undeniably the product of focus groups. This is a movie completely devoid of originality, with nothing to justify its existence. It’s corporate filmmaking at its purest, and while the slick product may go down easy enough with the masses, the sickly sweetness will be enough to turn discerning audiences’ stomachs.
21 may boast a second disc full of special features, but the only one that sets it apart from the usual featurettes and deleted scenes that bloat most DVD releases is a digital copy for your computer. While a good idea on paper, this concept suffers in execution as well. Installing the movie on your computer would be a horrible waste of memory, and it only works on PCs. Those with Macs are lucky to not even have to fathom horror of owning 21 on two formats.
