Saw 21 last night. It was reasonably entertaining. Knowing Ben Mezrich from college, I was not surprised to hear the main character called Ben (the character is based on Jeff Ma and was called Kevin Lewis in Ben Mezrich’s book ‘Bringing Down the House’ from which the movie is loosely derived). But the movie could have been so much better simply by ironing out the many minor nuisances. There are three sources of nuisances. First, unnecessary dumbing down of material, such as in the lecture scene and in the description of how the system works. Second, misapplied or wrong technical jargon, such as in the scene where Ben brings the wrong chip for the robotics project. Third, geographical inaccuracies, especially in the Vegas scenes. The Hard Rock does not have a view of the Bellagio fountains. You’d think that if you spend many millions of dollars on shooting a movie you could be bothered to get these things right. For people who know that these things are wrong they are really jarring, ruining any suspension of disbelief. But even for everyone else there will be a heightened sense of authenticity which will greatly improve the movie.
