STUDIO: Sony
RELEASE DATE: July 22, 2008
STARRING: Jim Sturgess, Kate Bosworth, Kevin Spacey, Jacob Pitts, Sam Golzari, Aaron Yoo, and Laurence Fishburne
WRITTEN BY: Peter Steinfeld & Allan Loeb
DIRECTED BY: Robert Luketic
FEATURES: 21: The Advantage Player
Basic Strategy: A Complete Film Journal Making Of
Money Plays: A Tour Of The Good Life
Filmmakers Commentary
Blu-ray Exclusive Feature: 21 Virtual Blackjack Game

The flashing lights, the beautiful people, the energized atmosphere - 21 is a perfect movie for Blu-Ray. It's a film about how the high stakes and ridiculous rewards of a gambling life can make you forget what's really important and suck you in to a world that you didn't even know existed. This is the kind of material that only works if it looks amazing and nothing looks better than Blu-Ray. Sony continues to knock it out of the park in this format when it comes to the technical details. The movie itself? That's another story. 21 starts strong enough - the source material is a great non-fiction book by Ben Mezrich called Bringing Down the House - but eventually busts out in legendary fashion. By the end, a movie that starts with a decent hand has watched the dealer draw to 21 and lost its entire stack. The further 21 gets away from its source material, the more ridiculous and unbearable it becomes, like a gambler telling you the story of the one that got away and embellishing a few too many details to make it believable. See it for the glitz and the glamour but if you care an iota about believable characters or interesting plots, go to another table.

When he was a student at M.I.T., Jeff Ma became a part of an underground group of math whizzes who figured out that blackjack was beatable. If they could count the cards as they came out of the shoe, they could figure out when the odds were in the player's favor. Using a complex system of players, some as straight counters who would then call in the big betters, Ma and his classmates made a killing and nearly lost their lives in the process. Counting cards isn't something that the casinos encourage and Ma has some harrowing stories and is still not allowed near a blackjack table. Ma was turned into Kevin Lewis in the book and has now been turned into Ben Campbell in 21, where he is played by Across the Universe's Jim Sturgess. In the film, Ben is sucked in by Micky Rosa (Kevin Spacey), a morally corrupt professor who leads the card-counting ring. Micky has his own history with Vegas that should make Ben wary but the much-needed cash flow and the beautiful blonde (Kate Bosworth) make it impossible to say no.

21 looks great, especially on Blu-Ray, but it falls victim to its own glitzy sheen. It's as if the team spent a bit too much time focusing on the details of the system and the world of Vegas and forgot that it's always about the screenplay. Every twist and turn in 21 is one that you can see coming a mile away, as if you stacked the deck. Think about that. It's a predictable film about something that we love primarily because of its unpredictability - gambling. If you know the basic plot, you could write 21 yourself. It's that easy to see coming. As Ben looks out over Vegas for the first time, there are a thousand stories being told in that city of sin. The fact that director Robert Luketic has told such a predictable and relatively simple one is disappointing.

Fans of 21 will surely be satisfied by the Blu-Ray disc, which has no discernible problems with video or audio. One small thing about Sony Blu-Ray before we get to the special features. If anyone's reading, please either perfect or discard the "snaps" on the outside of the case. They never work right. The one on my copy of 21 flaps around. In the early days of standard DVD, more studios had snaps or clasps and then they realized they weren't necessary. Do we have to go through the same thing with Blu-Ray? Was the technology of normal DVD cases that hard to replicate? Anyway, the special features on 21 are pretty good but not overwhelming. There's a commentary track and about half an hour of featurettes. The coolest feature on the Blu-Ray disc, and one that's oddly not mentioned on the back of the case, is the virtual blackjack game. When the movie starts to bore you, switch over and play some cards yourself.