...Ben Mezrich's (<--note correct spelling, Stephanie) books, I'm hesitant to see this picture for a couple reasons: 1) the tepid reviews it's getting, including here, and 2) the fact that while the majority of the MIT blackjack team were Asian-Americans, none of the cast depicting them is.

From the preview I saw, looks like they changed a lot of things from the book. Kind of pointless if you ask me. The book was interesting enough, they could have stuck more to the main parts of it.

The reason card-playing movies never work (with the one notable exception actually not being about the card-playing) is that they are based on a visual lie, and everyone in the audience knows it.

All show the time spend bellied up to the gaming table to be fun, exhilarating, glamorous. When in fact playing cards for money (as distinct to playing for "fun") is a long horrible grind, where the name of the game is to get in as many "hands" per hour to make your minuscule statistical advantage (obtained through "counting") "pay off".

Of course that's stupefyingly boring, and therefore practically unfilmable, and thus the bright lights, laughs-and-excitement fake version that is put to film never ever rings "true" -- and so card-playing movies never ever feel right, and never ever work.

Given a perfect opportunity to show this truth, and focus "21" on the real meat of the story -- the back room tensions and interactions with casinos who clearly don't like to lose -- the director went (again, predictably) with the "grinding is fun!" visuals, and so right at its heart "21" contains the untruth that, in the end, makes it feel unreal and therefore fail as a film.

counting the cracks in the ceiling.

worst salon subheadline ever.

I'd like to know what your one exception is. Rounders was a fine movie, very much about card-playing, virtually all set in back rooms and dingy halls. Knish the grinder was mocked by Worm, but the viewer is left with little doubt which one of them could truly make a living playing cards.

Hollywood has to pretend that only suburban white folks are witty and smart enough to pull off a con like 21, i.e. the typical white person, when the main characters of the story are Asian.

The typical American mentality of "We're #1" when we are anything but. Hollywood has no problem selling American's their most prized commodity, self love. We're all winners in fantasy land.

Maybe if the Main character was named Long Duck Dong it would have been maintained and not made into the typical everyday Caucasian Super American?

After all, it is OK for Hollywood to portray Asians negatively, but it is bad marketing to make them stars in stories about them, when you could replace them with a marketable and "attractive" group of white people instead, while at the same time making the ignorant Americans that go see the flick feel better about themselves and their shitty math skills. After all, here is a group of white folk that are good at math, and they aren't Asian!

America, FUCK YEAH! We're #1!

All show the time spend bellied up to the gaming table to be fun, exhilarating, glamorous. When in fact playing cards for money (as distinct to playing for "fun") is a long horrible grind, where the name of the game is to get in as many "hands" per hour to make your minuscule statistical advantage (obtained through "counting") "pay off".

That's not how the MIT blackjack ring operated. To make good money counting cards you have to bet big when the count is in your favor. However, casinos will instantly know you're counting cards based on your betting patterns. To get around this, the MIT team had two or three counters playing at different tables, a high roller and a spotter who'd direct the high roller to the appropriate table when the count was good. That way the high roller could play the part of a big-spending loudmouth who swoops in on a table and wins big without drawing any suspicion (for a while, anyway). The high-roller role was glamorous; they had to be convincing, after all.

Have you ever been in a courtroom? Dullest goddam place on Earth. That fact hasn't prevented the movies and television from making some pretty gripping drama (and even comedy) out of courtroom goings-on. And that's only one of a thousand examples of tedious realities that have been transmogrified by the movies for entertainment purposes. You may be right about card-playing movies not working -- I have no example of one that did work to hold up -- but it isn't because the film fails to give us the true story of what it's really like. Movies practically never do that.

Having been a director of security in an Atlantic City Casino I can tell you this. Most casinos have count teams watching the games and if they think a group is counting they call for a shuffle. Card counting is not as easy as it looks. You might get one shoe in six where the odds favor you.

Should you try your hand at it I suggest you bring lots of money.