21

It's always very disappointing when a film that has potential for greatness throws all that potential out the window, and that is precisely what happens in 21, a film that could've been nail-biting and intense, perhaps even a successful coming-of-age tale, and ends up not working as any of those things. You want a good movie that deals with this topic, features interesting characters, and actually EXPLOITS card games/gambling to create tension? Look no further than Rounders, if you haven't seen it yet. In 21, we're not really worried for a single second that our lead character won't be able to get the money he needs to get into med school. We don't care. In Rounders, you're literally on the edge of your seat whenever you think the protagonist (played by Matt Damon) is in danger of losing his money, or has lost it. I suppose it also helps that Rounders doesn't have a sophomoric script, which 21 most definitely does.

Speaking of Rounders, let me add that Matt Damon is a thousand times a better actor than Jim Sturgess, who plays our "hero" of sorts in 21. Let me tell you all the ways in which Sturgess fails, as Ben. First of all, he tries and tries and tries, but man, he cannot pull off the American accent. There are numerous occasions in which his true accent comes out. There's a moment in which he says "Oh God", and you can hear the longer "o" sound so clearly, that I thought I wasn't hearing right, but apparently I was. Secondly, he fails completely at being believable as the genius geek he's supposed to be. As a geek, I'll admit that he's more believable than, say, Ryan Philippe in Antitrust, but that's not saying much. Now, these two failings would be okay if they were the only issues, but Sturgess also doesn't succeed at coming across as a real character at all. Were he playing Ben with his native accent and as a non-geek, he would still feel like a piece of cardboard rather than a solid individual.

I saw Sturgess just recently in a supporting role in The Other Boleyn Girl, as the brother of the two female protagonists, George (the Boleyn boy, heh), and he was certainly better than he is here, ESPECIALLY during his last scenes in the film, in which he conveys a thousand times more emotion than anything he ever conveys in 21. He was also one of the stronger points of the otherwise overrated Across the Universe, as the lead of that film. I've wondered what it is that's so charming about him, because he's not really particularly attractive or anything, and then I realized that it has something to do with his smile and certain other facial expressions, I suppose. Ironically, the film actually ends with a shot of him smiling (aww, don't tell me you think I spoiled the movie for you... did you really think it was gonna end tragically? lol). But even THAT doesn't save the movie.

The other performances? Both Kevin Spacey and Laurence Fishburne are initially believable, yet that wears off towards the end. To their credit, though, that might simply be because of how silly and contrived everything becomes during that segment of the film. Kate Bosworth is as ineffective as she's always been (Jill is another case of someone that isn't believable for even a second as the "rocket scientist" we're told she is). What's worse, seeing Bosworth on-screen with Spacey brought back memories of Superman Returns... gag... one good thing I'll say about 21 is that both actors at least give better performances here than they did in Superman Returns, so, well, I guess that's comforting. As Kianna, Liza Lapira gives one of the better performances in the film; her facial expressions often add much-needed tension to the otherwise lackluster montage scenes in which the students are playing Blackjack, so thank God they cast her. As Choi, Aaron Yoo keeps typecasting himself into the silly kid role that he also played in Disturbia, and because of that, there's not much space for him to show any concrete acting range.

Among the very few good things I can point out about the movie, there is a scene in which Ben and Jill are on the train (or the T, as they call it in Boston), and Ben tries to kiss her and Jill doesn't let him. This scene could've taken the predictable, contrived path of having Jill get pissed off and leave, and then later having us endure a scene in which Ben apologizes, etc, but instead, the scene unfolds pretty realistically (quite a departure from what the rest of the film feels like). Jill tells him that they can't do that because they're on the team together, but that he doesn't need to worry about it, and reassures him a lot, and it helps that this is all happening in a rushed and awkward manner, as the train is at the stop Jill gets off at. I don't know, but this scene just reminded me a lot of the way things actually happen in circumstances like that, and it's a shame that the same approach wasn't taken towards the rest of the movie. Another positive I'll point out is that I didn't necessarily see the "twist" at the end coming... I say "twist" in quotation marks, though, because as much as I didn't see it coming, it wasn't a particularly inventive shocker either. It's something you've seen happen in movies a dozen times before. The only other thing I enjoyed about 21 was watching the scenes that featured the campus of the college I attended and graduated from recently, Boston University (yes, the scenes are set in MIT, but they were actually shot at BU). Other than all of that, there's nothing interesting to be found here. One of the worst sins you can commit is take what was apparently a nail-biting real-life story and turn it into an implausible (yes, it's based on a true story, but the way events unfold on-screen is indeed implausible, thanks to the approach taken by the cast and crew) and monotonous piece of filmmaking.

4/10