I Thought We Agreed We Weren't Gonna Round up Anymore

One movie I probably should not have seen was 21, a movie about a bunch of MIT students who go to Las Vegas on weekends and land big money by counting cards. I shouldn’t have seen it not based on the quality of the film but after watching I thought to myself, I could do that. And that is the exactly reason why Vegas liked the movie, it causes people to think they can count cards when it is not as easy as the movie suggests. (Okay, it is actually is as easy as the movie would suggest, it just takes a lot longer to actually get a lot of money than the movie suggests.)

My aspirations to lose my entire fortune aside, 21 is more than a gambling film. The movie follows Jim Sturgess (Across the Universe) while he finds a way to get into Harvard Medical School and it is not his grades keeping him out and the promotion at his clothing store isn’t going to put a dent into that tuition. Luck would have it that his professor Kevin Spacey (Pay it Forward) is looking for another student to recruit into his Vegas field trips. Along for the ride is Kate Bosworth who hasn’t looked this attractive on film since Blue Crush.

21 is actually funnier than the trailer would have you to believe thanks mostly to Jim’s two friends and science club buddies who are building a robot together. And that juxtaposition of the nerdier, cold, wintry Boston and sleek, cool Vegas almost makes two distinctive films with the card counters even playing cooler versions of them. Now if there is anyone who would like to be my own personal Kate Bosworth, I will meet you in Vegas.

21 gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.