Luckily for Ben, he happens to be an absolute genius when it comes to numbers and using logic to deal with random probability. His beautiful mind brings him to the atten-tion of one of his teachers, professor Micky Rosa(Kevin Spacey), who brings Ben into his handpicked crew of likewise brainy students for a singular purpose: to professionally count cards at blackjack tables in Vegas, and thereby clean up.

     21 is at its best when initially introducing the students: Choi(Aaron Yoo), Kianna(Liza Lapira), Fisher(Jacob Pitts) and the girl Ben has a secret crush on, Jill(Kate Bosworth). All the students are likeable characters to a degree, and more or less interesting. Sturgess is both believable and sympathetic as Ben, a young kid looking to create a good future for him-self, but doesn't realize that the quick road to success is often quite bumpy. Spacey is back in fine form as Rosa, a schemer of a guy who can either be a student's best friend when he's pleased with the money they pull in for him, or their worst nightmare if they fail to live up to his expectations in any way.

     The movie differs significantly from the true story of the Blackjack Team(they are never referred to as such in the film) in that it's more interesting than the real-life events. Because of his extracurricular activities, Ben has a falling out with his two best--and only real--friends Miles(Josh Gad) and Cam (Sam Golzari), with whom he's been working on an important science project for a year. The trade off for this personal fail-ing of course, is that he gets to eventually sleep with his dream girl and win an insane amount of money simply for being good with math. It's his abilities that eventually cause problems for him when he has a clash of egos with Rosa, and which also draw the unwanted attention of two hard-nosed casino enforcers, Cole Williams(Laurence Fishburne) and his partner Terry(Jack McGee). Cole and Terry are having a bad run in their careers; they're Old School vets who are losing a lot of jobs in succession because of new cheater spotting software that's becoming all the rage in casinos. The two men need a break of luck, and stumbling upon Ben and his card counting partners could be the mother lode for them.

     Up until the moment when Ben is finally confronted by Cole and Terry, 21 is an enjoyable type of heist romp. However, at just over two hours, the film overstays its welcome like a bad gambler at a table who just doesn't know when to quit. While it is entertaining, 21 also feels slow and ponderous. It quickly becomes annoying when the plot takes an abrupt left turn and falls into all the standard cliches of every gambling movie ever made, complete with a broken string of good luck, rough interrogation scenes by the enforcers, and the standard double crosses between teammates. It's at this point--only about halfway or so into the film--that the good will between the movie and its audience is broken, and all faith in the script(by writers Peter Steinfeld and Allan Loeb, of Analyze That and Things We Lost in the Fire, respectively) is lost.

     Kevin Spacey's Triggerstreet production company helped to co-produce the film, and for Spacey this is obviously a labor of love. This is also evident in the fact he has once again hired his Superman Returns accomplice Kate Bosworth, whom he was taken with when they filmed Beyond the Sea, and who manages to turn in a convincing performance as a college student who comes to appreciate Ben not because he's the hot stud on campus, but because of his intelligence, a rarity in cinema. Nowadays, Spacey seems to reserve his best performances for those films in which he has an intimate financial investment, rather than just emotional...and such is the case on display here. The problem is, Spacey needs to look past the bottom line and choose stories which are solid, and which won't leave an audience feeling that they've rolled the dice on what seemed a promising investment, only to come up snake eyes at the last minute.

     Yes, the gambling metaphor is mixed, but then again, so is the unbalanced nature of 21, a film which starts out in an interesting and promising manner...but once you leave the theater, you'll have the distinct and unsettling feeling that you lost on the double down, and the house has definitely won.