Mar. 27--The number 21 has two meanings in the movie "21."

It's the number, of course, you always want your cards to total in every hand of blackjack. It's also the gambling hero Ben Campbell's age, though, and as Jim Sturgess plays him, that's the trouble.

It's a pretty good movie -- a pleasant cautionary tale about a bunch of whiz kids at MIT who are recruited by their worldliest prof to use their skills in a team against the casinos in Las Vegas.

American Fantasy 101, then: taking the casinos down. Beating them at their own games. Turning the odds upside down in favor of the player. Charging into a temple of money and walking out with a big bunch of it every time.

The film is freely adapted from a true story about Jeff Ma told in the best seller "Bringing Down the House."

The protagonist in the film is skating through MIT -- that's how smart he is. The trouble is that he needs a scholarship to complete his dream and get through Harvard Medical School. His father's gone and his mom is just a loving, hard-working waitress. His, to understate, is not a wealthy family and the full tour of Harvard Med requires $300,000.

He goes in, then, for something called The Robinson Scholarship. That, however, is a tough one given to candidates whose distinctness leaps out and dazzles the committee. And our boy Ben just isn't that.

He couldn't be more ordinary if he tried. His best friends are robot-building nerds who seem to be refugees from a Judd Apatow comedy. He fades into the woodwork.

Enter his favorite Satanic prof, played by Kevin Spacey.

What if he could do anything he ever wanted in his life, moneywise, if he just joined a secret squadron of card counters that raided Vegas casinos every now and then and scored huge bundles at the blackjack tables?

It's "Faust" then in Vegas. Or maybe "The Paper Chase" turned upside down.

And now the problem: our boy, the hero with all the assailed virtue and M.D. dreams, is played by Jim Sturgess, a pleasant nonentity whose face you'll have trouble conjuring up in your head an hour after you leave the theater.

His love interest is played by Kate Bosworth -- a B-plus beauty and B-minus actress.

Sorry. You can't do that. If you're going to tell a tale like this, you've got to have a solid center, a young actor who's got a lot of charisma and dramatic potential just sitting at a table sipping a Chivas Regal.

This fellow's agreeable enough. No one would object too strenuously to him marrying your sister, but no one would pick him out of a lineup to star in a major Hollywood film either.

Especially when the cards on the other side of the generational aisle are stacked with such ludicrous effortless power.

Whenever Spacey sashays through the set as the nasty, black-hearted and urbane prof, you can't watch anyone else. Ditto a beefed-up Laurence Fishburne as the casino's old school enforcer, the kind of fellow who takes card counters down to the basement and asks "you think you can beat the system? (Holds up big fist.) This is the system beating you back." Oof. Right into the gut.

This, it seems to me, is a community-wide Hollywood problem -- call it Josh Hartnett syndrome -- and the execs in charge of the town are going to have to stop dead in their tracks and think it through.

They're making all these young folk movies every week. But the stars of them are less memorable and credible than a box of Raisinets. I'm sure it keeps the payrolls and, therefore, budgets down nicely but sooner or later they're going to have to make some major concerted efforts to find some Steve McQueens and Paul Newmans and Tom Hanks and Tom Cruises and Natalie Woods and Jane Fondas and Julia Robertses dazzling a little inside all this generational oatmeal.

Otherwise, you're watching a movie and rooting for the bad guys -- just to show up and at least make the movie interesting.

One other thing occurs to me about this tale, however swiftly and efficiently told it is.

Why does society in general allow card-counting to be verboten in casinos?

I understand that colluding against the house is deeply unfair to all the other players but if one individual is able to use mathematical skills the rest of us don't have, why should that be wrong? Why should gaming commissions allow casinos to make it wrong?

How can we always get away with squashing unusual ability and training? We don't, after all, require that Tom Brady sprain his ankle every time he goes out to lead the New England Patriots.

So why shouldn't individual math whizzes be able to sit down at Vegas tables and calculate the probabilities and make a fortune?

So sorry if it messes up the profit margins but it's legal it seems to me. And fair too.

Just asking, you know?

Movie Review

"21"

★★★ (Out of four)

Rated: PG-13

Jim Sturgess, above, Kate Bosworth, Kevin Spacey and Laurence Fishburne in Robert Luketic's movie about a bunch of MIT whiz kids who go to Vegas and take the casinos for millions. Opening Friday in area theaters.

jsimon@buffnews.com

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