I guess this is why I found the movie 21 – The movie so great. The story behind the movie was known to me, as I’ve played poker for some years now and Andy Bloch (a member of the actual MIT Blackjack Team) is a well known player. He’s never lied about once being a member and he’s taught the game to a number of people. Beating Blackjack I guess has changed the game a bit and not in favour of the house.

21 portraies a student at MIT who has his mind set on medical studies at Harvard, at the sum of $300.000! The movie starts by showing the viewers “Ben”, who’s applying for a scholarship worth $300.000. Being that the scholarship is granted to only one tudent each year and having close to 100 applicants, there is some difficulty in getting it.

One of Bens teachers (played by Kevin Spacey) realize the potential in Ben for mathematics and cognetics, approaches Ben and offers to teach him the fine art of counting cards. Ben is reluctant but decides to join the “team” after some consideration and mentoring.

From here the movie takes you on a cruise of the Las Vegas scene and manages to keep you interrested (I think even those not very interrested cards and math should find it somewhat exciting). The movie even manages to throw you a curveball or two and thus there’s even more to keep you from turning the TV off.

I’m not too keen on using ratings but on this occation I will. I’ll give it a 4.8/6.