21

Movie : 21

Genre: Drama

Cast: Jim Sturgess, Kevin Spacey, Kate Bosworth, Lawrence Fishburne

Rating: *** and 1/2

Review:

"The house always wins"

Daniel Ocean; Ocean's 11

"...it is legal and more importantly , it is BEATABLE."

Prof Mickey Rosa ;21

Duping the casino's seems to be a favourite Hollywood hobbie, so many a times have the Vegas guys been robbed of their millions that you actually wonder how do they pay the bills for those fountains and lighting!

21 shows how you do not need layout plans of the vault, tapping the phones, and blowing out the power grid of Vegas to rob the Casino's. A group of MIT grads led by their Maths prof Micky Rosa (Kevin Spacey) learn how to count cards and beat the dealer in Blackjack a game Rosa says, is simple Math.

Told through the eyes of Ben Campbell(Jim Strugess) who needs the dough to fund his Harvard dream, 21 is a stylish entertainer. Jim Strugess essays the role of the brilliant yet reticent guy on the Campus who with his buddies tops all the courses, yet cannot find the guts to approach a girl. All that changes when he is spotted by his Maths prof. in a lecture. He soon learns that Prof Rosa is not only charming teacher, but also a brilliant businessman (of the most bizarre kind). He trains Ben alongwith a team of other equally sharp students to stump the casino's.

Life changes for Ben on every weekend when Rosa takes this oddball team of Mathematicians to Vegas and rake some serious Moolah (and gets a girlfriend too). Ben soaks it all as he gets to lead a life that he only dreamt of, though at the the expense of losing his nerd friends. The movie then takes a predictable path as Jealousy and Greed kick in within the team. Ben finds out that the Prof. is not all that sweet and the Casino's find that something is wrong somewhere and set a soon to be redundant thug (Lawrence Fishburne) after this team. Soon enough Ben has to make choices to set things right in his life. How he does that makes up for the climax of the movie, which sure does take you by surprise.

By the posters the movie seemed to be a Kevin Spacey movie, but make no mistake the movie belongs to Jim Sturgess. As Ben the guy is at ease playing the both the Nerd and the Gambler. It is his performance that keeps you rooting for him throughout the film. Kevin Spacey is well Kevin Spacey, very few people can deliver a line like this guy and here too as Prof Micky Rosa he is absolutely brilliant in the scenes where he has something to say, but sadly his role keeps tapering as the film progresses and by the end you actually seemed to have lost track of this brilliant, maniacal professor. But the movie is not about the prof as much it is about the students, and they all perform well.

The movie is supposed to be based on real life incidents, difference being the team's ethnicity. In real life the team was comprised of only asians while here Ben is shown as the leader of the team with a couple of Asians tossed in for the effect. But then it's Hollywood and who really needs re-assurance that we guys are actually smarter than the Americans eh?

The movie is well paced at approx 2 hrs and alongwith it's stylish Vegas shots and some good background score never lets you drift away. All in all a paisa vasool flick that never gets heavy on you and leaves you with the feeling of having seen something Fresh!