M.I.T. students are a bright lot but can be restless, compelled to find outlets for their creativities. Grand pranks are the most visible and arguably the most fun. The Great Dome atop M.I.T.’s iconic building has, at one time or another, been converted into R2D2, a vast breast, and became the resting place for a fake police car. The cruiser, complete with flashing lights and a mannequin dressed in uniform with a toy gun and a box of donuts, was found to be constructed from the metal body parts of a Chevrolet Cavalier attached to a wooden frame; it, like all other similar pranks, was assembled on the dome’s roof over the course of one night. These are the works of benign hackers, not the destructive type of hackers that give the term a bad name.

Sometimes M.I.T. students direct their intellects toward beating a system, and a couple of decades ago, a dedicated organization applied mathematical analyses to the game of Blackjack and created a team of players that would earn hundreds of thousands of dollars at many widespread casinos. Based on a book by Ben Mezrich, Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions, 21 takes great liberty with their story, adding touches of melodrama to make their carefully concealed exploits palatable for the big screen.

The film begins with establishing the main protagonist, someone with whom we can empathize. Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess) is a senior with a 4.0 grade point average and with an outstanding grade on his Medical College Admission Test (just like the rest of us). He earns a rare early admission to Harvard Medical School, but the $300,000 cost of that advanced education is a daunting impediment. Saving money from a job at a local men’s clothing store simply won’t do; and his single-parent mom can’t afford it. He needs a full scholarship. Unfortunately, during a Harvard interview, he simply didn’t seem to have that special something worthy of a free ride.

Enter Professor Micky Rosa (Kevin Spacey), Ben’s Nonlinear Algebra instructor. Ben’s unusual mathematical skills don’t go unnoticed and Ben is soon invited to join a small group of brilliant students dedicated to tapping into Vegas billions. There’s Jill Taylor (Kate Bosworth), perhaps the most attractive coed in M.I.T.’s history, Choi (Aaron Yoo), Kianna (Liza Lapira), and Jimmy Fisher (Jacob Pitts), the current big player who has an ego problem. Micky runs the show, establishing technique, defining counting and betting strategies, and providing the bankroll. He trains his team in all the skills they will need to take advantage of Blackjack as the only game with a known history that can affect the outcome of future hands. Ben reluctantly agrees to join, but only until he can secure the $300,000 he needs for his medical education.

Within the team, there are counters who signal when a table is ripe for a big player to make a score; they bet the house minimum and keep track of the decks in the shoe. When a big player is directed to such a table, he suddenly seems unusually lucky. The team flies to Las Vegas on weekends and after Ben, who’s been assigned the roll of a big player, overcomes his nervousness and inexperience, they find themselves quite successful.

But the film wouldn’t have much dramatic kick without a dangerous villain waiting to pounce. Cole Williams (Laurence Fishburne) runs a loss management company and acts as a consultant to casinos; he sniffs out card counters and cheaters. Our introduction to Cole is rather harsh; he’s beating the crap out of another card counter as a warning, driving home the threat that if he shows up in Las Vegas again, he’ll be killed… painfully. This harkens back to a time when casinos were controlled by organized crime elements; it may not ring true today, but it does add a note of dramatic threat. Cole is feeling pressure; he only has one client left and is being made obsolete by facial recognition software that can identify known cheaters and counters (although it was never revealed how those cheaters and counters could be identified by a computer). What follows is a cat and mouse game between the M.I.T. team and Cole with a few interesting twists thrown in to keep the audience involved.

Alas, the screenplay has several flaws that collapsed my willing suspension of disbelief. The production had access to the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino and filmed at the tables while the casino was open for business (getting releases from patrons must have been a nightmare). Consequently, instead of the film portraying the team hitting many casinos, which would make their winnings more random and anonymous, the team returns to the Hard Rock time after time, and that just happens to be Cole’s last client. For such a smart kid, Ben makes an unusual choice for storing his winnings, one other than a bank’s safety deposit box. And although I don’t gamble, I’ve had occasion to walk through many casinos, most recently during the Home Media Expo. I never heard the kind of loud excitement at the tables portrayed in this film; all the players I saw were hunkered down and seemed quite pensive. I guess that’s what happens when the house advantage makes nearly everyone a loser.

There are other improbabilities, but I don’t want to reveal too much. This is a moderately entertaining film that is structured to entertain rather than put what was patient and tedious work on the screen.

The Video: How Does The Disc Look?

The film’s theatrical aspect ratio of 2.40:1 is presented in a great looking high definition transfer compressed with the AVC video CODEC. I was impressed with the level of detail, both finely grained textures and small object detail. Color is also impressive. Flesh tones are very natural and the flamboyant neon of Las Vegas is spectacular. The video dynamic range is excellent, from deep dark blacks to the bright daylight of desert Las Vegas. The film was shot digitally with the Genesis camera and the images are spotless. My only complaint is that during some nighttime aerial shots of the Vegas Strip, the bright lights against the black background seemed just a little over exposed; I suspect that this is a source element issue rather than a transfer issue. This sharp as a tack transfer is very film-like.

The Audio: How Does The Disc Sound?

The Dolby TrueHD 5.1 track is fine, but underwhelming. There were ample opportunities to immerse the viewer in the cacophony that is a casino or a strip club, and yet the mix is very front-centric. Sound effects simply serve the onscreen action. With the exception of some bass from source tracks, the bottom end isn’t challenged. But the track does convey subtle sounds very well, like the tinkling of glasses raised for a toast, or the clacking of chips on felt topped tables. Voices are also nicely conveyed with a pleasing timbre and a fine sense of presence.

The alternate languages are in French and Portuguese on Dolby TrueHD 5.1 tracks, and Spanish and Thai on Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks. Optional subtitles are in English SDH, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Indonesian, Thai, and Korean.

The Supplements: What Goodies Are There?

We begin with a commentary by director Robert Luketic and producers Dana Brunetti and Michael De Luca. This is an amiable track with trivia and small details shared with the viewer. The usual topics are covered but there are slight overlaps with some of the video supplements.

Moving on to the featurettes, all of which are presented in 1.78:1 high definition, The Advanced Player (5:25) is a short tutorial on how to count cards and how that affects your chances of winning.

Basic Strategy: A Complete Journal (24:48) is the making-of featurette. It’s here that we learn about casting, location shooting, set design, the use of digital cameras, and other aspects of the shoot. We learn that M.I.T. did not permit access any closer than the sidewalks and the production had to go to another university for classroom and lecture hall interiors. We also discover how the smooth transition from aerial to ground-based opening shot was accomplished. A considerable cut above EPK, this supplement informs.

Money Plays: A Tour of the Good Life featurette (7:08) explores Las Vegas high end shopping, the costume design, and the luxurious sets that portray the lavish casino-hotel suites comped to high rollers.

Next is 21 Virtual Blackjack, a BD-J game that can act as a training tool for novice card counters. The game has both a training mode and a play mode. Clever, but annoyingly slow to load.

You’ll find the usual Bookmark feature that allows you to select favorite scenes for random access.

And there is a collection of high definition trailers: a Sony BD promo; Prom Night; The Other Boleyn Girl; Men in Black; Damages Season 1; Persepolis; Across the Universe; Made of Honor; Vantage Point; and, Married Life.

The 123-minute film is organized into sixteen chapters.

Final Thoughts

This is a flawed but interesting film about an industrious team of exceptionally bright M.I.T. students who had far more success at winning casinos’ money than is portrayed here. The disc offers a great visual presentation, a fine aural presentation, and a group of reasonable supplements.