Learning from Las Vegas

We skipped seeing Batman last night and instead rented "21." Its based on the true story of a team of MIT mathematicians who develop a system to count cards and signal hot decks at blackjack tables. Our protagonist joins the group reluctantly, saying, its only until he earns the $300k its gonna take to fund his way through Harvard medical school. He gets greedy, loses everything, but in the end, ends up using the story of his experience to win the prestigious Robinson Scholarship that ultimately grants him the free ride to Harvard.

The subplot finds Cole Williams (Lawrence Fishburn) as the casino pitboss whose job is to rid the Riviera casino of its card counters. His career is on the verge of obsolescence as more and more casinos are opting for that camera that uses face recognition imagery to identify known card cheaters. The pitboss, looking to secure a pension that his job does not offer, makes a deal with our hip protagonist in which he receives $200,000 and more importantly, Mickey (Kevin Spacey), whom, many moons ago, made a killing counting cards on the day Cole took off and therefore costing our pitboss his job at the MGM. Cole has held the grudge nearly a lifetime and our finale involves the day of reckoning for Mickey.

Mickey: the MIT professor who organized his most gifted students into a squad capable of bringing down any house in Vegas; the terse genius who used his talents for personal gain; the academic turned entrepreneur.

"21" tells an interesting story of how the working class teams up with a subcultural group of young urban professionals in order to beat the system. But the system isnt blackjack, its academia and the seemingly inescapable fact that it functions today without apology as a corporation aimed strictly at knowledge that steamrolls quick and exorbitant amounts of money. Its not Vegas that lacks a soul, its your campus. And it becomes fun to ask why one would set out to 'beat a system' they ultimately wish to join. We'll see our rebel protagonist in class on monday.

Despite this cynical social commentary on the Ivy League, 21 taps deep into neoliberal daydreams as the institution happily grants our storyteller his scholarship and the brilliant young mathematician grants, in turn, our worker his pension. There's always someone somewhere making the handout, this film would like us to believe. But is that a hand one should be betting on?