Bad hand

IT'S HARD TO DETERMINE what is more offensive about 21, the Kevin Spacey-commandeered adaptation of Ben Mezrich's Bringing Down the House. Is it the formulaic, predictable and archaic Hollywood-isms added to the fascinating story of M.I.T.'s infamous blackjack team in order to max out the box office potential? Or the film's failure to stand on its own and be entertaining for audiences unfamiliar with the card-counting kids who spent their weekend cleaning out casinos in the '90s?

I'll say both. Producer Dana Brunetti -- an assistant to Spacey since his American Beauty heyday -- admits changes were made in order to make the film work as entertainment. But once that line was crossed, it seems they used Film Adaptations for Dummies and thus missed an opportunity to make a great movie with style and atmosphere.

The M.I.T. crew wasn't the first card-counting team to hit Las Vegas, but its methods were sophisticated and lucrative enough to warrant a book-length account of their exploits. In order to protect their identities, Mezrich changed the Asian surnames of key players for his book, which made it easier for the filmmakers to cast British Jim Sturgess (Across the Universe) as struggling student Ben Cambell and Kate Bosworth (Superman Returns) as love interest Jill Taylor, who helps lure him into joining the team. The decision to keep the leads white was made in order to maximize mass-audience appeal, as was the decision to move the time period forward 10-15 years.

Sturgess as Ben needs $300,000 to study medicine at Harvard and is even up for a scholarship, but he failed to "dazzle" during the application process. He does dazzle his abrasive professor Mickey Rosa (Spacey), who makes him an offer to join his card-counting progeny. Aside from Jill, there is future rival Fisher (Jacob Pitts), who serves as a big-betting "gorilla," and spotters Kianna (Liza Lapira) and Choi (Aaron Yoo), who round out the team as "spotters" and are suitably Asian.

I'm not harping on this Asian thing just because both Ben and Mickey Rosa are both largely based on real-life people whose ability to pose as foreign trustafarians from the Far East was instrumental to the real team's success. I bring it up because in this day and age, when Harold and Kumar can top the box office and the Democratic presidential nominee will almost certainly be African-American, 21's Asian students seem marginalized. Aaron Yoo's Choi steals everything in sight -- you know, hotel items, chocolates. He exists simply for comic relief when he could have had a role as substantial as Sturgess's.

Its just one element that came out of the dumbing-down process. The same goes for the time setting change. Granted, the film was held up for several years, but nostalgia cycle is about to turn to the '90s and 21 could have been on the cusp. Instead we have a homogenous modern rock score, gratuitous shots of brand-spankin' new Planet Hollywood, and a subplot involving security expert Cole Williams (Laurence Fishburne) trying to catch Ben and the gang in order to stave off being rendered obsolete by facial recognition technology.

There's little director Robert Luketic (Legally Blonde) can do to save the film. There are some serious lighting issues and a ham-handed approach to create contrast between dour Boston (brown and dingy) and Vegas (neon and new). His comic touch doesn't get a chance to surface, and helicopter shots of Vegas and casino sequences don't create adrenaline or suspense when they should. Worst of all, the filmmakers look like they finally couldn't decide if they were bringing down the house or creating a feature-length commercial for Vegas. The message is mixed, as are the results of their film.

21

Jim Sturgess, Kate Bosworth, Kevin Spacey. Directed by Robert Luketic.