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Saturday, June 14, 2008

Short Movie Review # 12: 21


Go for this one if you have ever played blackjack in your life. And if cards intrigue you. I qualify for both of these.

21 is based on a book, which is based on a real life story, of how a group of mentaly gifted MIT students are coached to count cards, and using these skills, rob casinos of millions of dollars.Playing just blackjack. Nothing else. No gadgets, no gizmos, no technology. No Oceans 13 like planning. Just pure mental calculating skills.

The cast jells together wonderfuly, with the veteran Kevin Spacey lending the required maturity to the teacher by weekdays, card team coach by weekends character. His hand picked college team jets off to Las Vegas on weekends, to "legally" rob casinos of a lot of money. The hero, Jim Sturgess ( who i feel is going to be stiff competition to Shia LeBouf over the coming years), takes some time to join but when he does, the movie really gets going.

Moving at a nice fast clip, 21 hardly has any boring moments. And the card scenes are shown beautifully with a realstic feel. Lawrence Fishburne returns to the screen after a long time, in a role tailormade for him. But somehow, I still think of him as Morpehus.

A chilled out soundtrack and some great lines make this a very watchable movie. Go for it.

Rating: 3.5 stars

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That sounds interesting..i like playing cards..and most of the times i am lucky with them.. and correct me if I am wrong, Is "jells" the correct spelling for the phrase..?Though i dont wish to challange your spellings..just a doubt:-)