21 (2008)
Ben Campbell is a young, highly intelligent student at M.I.T. in Boston who strives to succeed. Wanting a scholarship to transfer to Harvard School of Medicine with the desire to become a doctor, Ben learns that he cannot afford the $300,000 for the four to five years of schooling as he comes from a poor, working-class background. But one evening, Ben is introduced by his unorthodox math professor Micky Rosa into a small but secretive club of five students, Jill, Choi, Kianna, and Fisher, who are being trained by Professor Rosa in the skill of card counting at blackjack. Intrigued by the desire to make money, Ben joins his new friends on secret weekend trips to Las Vegas where, using their skills of code talk and hand signals, they have Ben make hundreds of thousands of dollars in winning blackjack at casino after casino. Ben only wants to make enough money for the tuition to Harvard and then back out. But as fellow card counter Jill Taylor predicts, Ben becomes corrupted by greed and his arrogance at winning which lets his feelings get in the way, and it also puts Professor Rosa, as well as the group, on the radar of a brutal casino security enforcer named Cole Williams, who holds a personal grudge of some kind against Rosa which threatens to undo everything the students have learned and earned.
Inspired by the true story of five students who changed the game forever.
[Cole Williams confronts Micky for the first time again]
Ben Campbell: [narrating, when we see Micky tied up in the basement of the casino] I had a 1590 on my SAT. I got a 44 on my MCATs. And I have a 4.0 GPA from MIT. I thought I had my life mapped out. But then I remembered what my Nonlinear Equations professor once told me, always account for variable change.
Cole Williams: [Cole Williams walks out of the shadows] Hello, Micky.
Micky Rosa: Look, I got money in Boston. A hundred grand. I'll give it to you. If you just let me walk away. I'll walk away.
Cole Williams: I don't want your money, Micky. I don't need it. But I know someone who might be interested. He's good with numbers, too. He works for the IRS.
Caesars Palace - 3570 Las Vegas Boulevard South, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino - 3667 Las Vegas Boulevard South, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
Venetian Hotel - 3355 Las Vegas Blvd South, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
Hard Rock Hotel and Casino - 4455 Paradise Road, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
McCarran International Airport - 5757 Wayne Newton Boulevard, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
Although set in the then-present day, i.e. 2007/8, the film is based on teams active between 1979 and 1994. And at one point, more than 80 players were on the original MIT team.
According to Kevin Spacey, as part of their research for the film, they took some of the real players who were on the original team to Vegas. Although they weren't allowed to play, every time they wanted Spacey to up his bet, they would push up against his chair. He said, "I would win every time!"
The main characters upon which the film 21 is based were Asian. Controversially, mostly Caucasian actors were cast. Jim Sturgess required a dialect coach to speak with an American accent.
Boston University students were used as extras in many of the classroom scenes.
The movie was used as a luxury prize for the contestants on the Big Brother (2000) 9 in the US. They played a competition involving blackjack, and the winners got to see a special advance screening of the movie. One contestant won a trip to Las Vegas worth $21,000, which included a three night stay at the same hotel the actors from the movie stayed in.
Continuity
During the opening credits, while Ben is riding his bike on the road, you see the same orange PT cruiser go past twice and the same silver Chrysler 300C go past three times.
When Ben's mom is serving birthday cake to Ben and his friends, she serves Cam twice.