The Count
Jim Sturgess plays a young genius named Ben Campbell who is trying to get into Harvard Medical School as his final year at MIT is coming to a close. He’s got it all; the knowledge, the resume – except for the money. He needs around $300k to get through, and the only way it looks like he can get that is working overtime for a few years at his job at a local men’s store, or by getting the only full ride scholarship available, but the competition to get that is extremely fierce.
Enter Kate Bosworth’s character, Jill Taylor, the pretty rocket scientist who convinces Ben to come to a meeting with one of their mutual teachers played by Kevin Spacey. Spacey plays Professor Micky Rosa, an advanced mathematics teacher with a history of card counting. He maintains a small group of MIT students and teaches them the ways of card counting, but very few are good enough to do more than setup a game for a big time player to come in and win. Using a simple, but effective, palette of signals and verbal cues, the team works together to become a force in Vegas, making sweeping victories week after week. At first, Ben intends to only win just enough to pay for Harvard, but it’s too much fun, and he continues to play. Tensions mount between him and Professor Rosa in some very interesting ways that destroy their friendship, and their business relationship. I should mention that Laurence Fishburne meanwhile, plays a Vegas casino security enforcer, who is very anti-card-counting. Using intimidation and violence, Fishburne is not afraid to deter cheaters or crafty players of any kind. This is especially true at this point in his career at the casinos, as the days of his job fade and give way to biometric facial recognition systems.
It’s hard not to say a great deal more about the story without risking giving out too much of it. 21 is one of those films, I call them a caper-movie, like The Score or Lucky Number Slevin, whereby the characters and the plot develop and twist in very interesting ways. The film is both dramatic and thrilling at points, and as is usual with these types of films, features a lot of betrayal but also a great ending, which is the case here.
The Release
On Blu-ray, 21 looks and sounds very good. This is probably one of the most colorful movies I have seen in some time, and this variety and clashing of colors stands out gorgeously on Blu-ray. I liked how you had both the cold, plain scenes at the MIT campus, and then at least as much there were the scenes of the glamour and lights of Vegas. I had very few issues with the video quality of 21; about the only thing I can think of was just that some of the dark scenes created minor areas of washed out splotchy textures. These scenes are few and really don’t detract away from an otherwise superb presentation. The same can be said for the Dolby TrueHD audio track. The audio focus in this film is dialogue, and it comes through very clearly throughout the film.
As far as extras, there are several included:
21: The Advantage Player: Having not ever played Blackjack before, this feature in which the cast explains the game and card counting was pretty cool. It only runs about five and a half minutes, but the MIT student cast (not Spacey or Fishburne) explain a bit of the history and mechanics of the game, and about counting.
Basic Strategy: A Complete Film Journal: This twenty-four minute making-of feature is presented in HD and is quite interesting. Spacey, Fishburne, director Robert Luketic, Producer Dana Brunetti, Ben Mezrich (author of Bringing Down the House), and others chip in their stories about getting the film ready for shooting and other anecdotal thoughts.
Money Plays: A Tour of the Good Life: A short feature that gives us a tour of the clothes, location, and other luxuries featured in the film. I don’t know if I’d call this the “good life” but it’s certainly something most of us don’t get to see for whatever reason. At only seven minutes, and with little point to begin with, this feature is forgettable, despite it being in HD.
21 Virtual Blackjack Game: This virtual blackjack game is actually cooler than I thought it would be, but it’s too static and boring to really play more than a time or two. A nice tutorial video shows you how to play, and if you have your system enabled for BD Live, you can even view Leaderboards. The game even includes a Pit Boss Meter that indicates how suspicious your playing activity is, and you can even choose different avatars to alter your appearance. It’s probably the best BD Live enabled feature I’ve seen yet, but it’s still not all that fun.
Director Commentary: An audio commentary track is included; I didn’t listen through all of it, but in skipping around the film, it offered a selection of interesting insights and thoughts on 21, fairly typical commentary but that’s not a bad thing.