The movie '21' which was released in 2008 is, as many may not know, an adaptation of a book that was written by Ben Mezrich. His best-selling book entitled 'Bringing the House Down' tells the story of a real MIT Blackjack Team who went to play at the Vegas strip.
The movie focuses around events surrounding Ben Campbell, a math major at the MIT. Campbell wanted to be a doctor so he applied and got accepted at the medical school in Harvard.
The only problem is, since he comes from a poor, middle-class family, he has no way of procuring the $300,000 needed to get him through school. While getting a scholarship would be the better option, the stiff competition prevents Campbell from pursuing this course of action.
Campbell's math professor Mickey Rosa invites him to join a blackjack team and Campbell initially declined, but after some persuasion he finally agrees on the premise that he is only doing it so that he could pay for Med school.
During weekends, Rosa takes his team of five students to Las Vegas where they play with a system that involves coordination by secret codes, hand gestures, and card counting. This is a very sophisticated technique where some members sit at blackjack tables, play small amounts while card counting and wait for the deck to become biased in favor of the players. They then signal another team member who joins the table and bets big, profiting from favorable odds.
Jill, a member of the team, develops an attraction towards Campbell. Another member named Fisher becomes jealous, provokes a fight and gets kicked off the team by Rosa. The chief of security Cole Williams closely monitors the team and is considered to be the main antagonist in the movie.
After a while, Campbell gets sidetracked by blackjack and slowly loses focus on his studies. He botched up an engineering contest and even failed to complete one of his subjects. In the casino, he loses some money which Rosa demands he pays back.
Campbell offers to play one more time and goes to the casino disguised. After winning, they run off with Williams hot on their tails. The film ends with Campbell recounting the story to an amazed scholarship director-which may be recalled as one of the options he didn't consider taking before joining Rosa's team.
The main cast is composed of Jim Sturgess who plays Ben Campbell, Kevin Spacey as Micky Rosa, Laurence Fishburne as Cole Williams, and Kate Bosworth who plays Jill Taylor. The other members of the team are Choi played by Aaron Yoo, Kianna played by Liza Lapira, and Fisher played by Jacob Pitts.
Interestingly enough, the real Ben Campbell, makes a cameo in the movie as Jeffrey Ma, a dealer at Planet Hollywood. With an estimated budget of $35 million, the movie grossed more than $24 million in more than 2,500 theaters in the US and Canada when it was first released over the weekend.
It was also declared a hit after placing number one on both the first and second week after the opening. By the end of its run, the movie grossed out a total of $157.8 million worldwide.
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