Micky Rosa (Spacey) has trained a team of math students to play blackjack and count cards. He’s taught them to use gestures which communicate when to place enormous bets at blackjack tables and then walk away without losing a dime. No wonder his team has managed to successfully bilk Vegas casinos out of millions of dollars!

When a member of the team breaks Micky’s rules about never gambling with the team’s money, Ben Campbell (Sturgess) takes the errant student’s place. Unfortunately, Micky  didn’t expect Ben to be disinterested in the proposition. However, Jill (Kate Bosworth) who shares the same classes as Ben, knows he’s sexually attracted to her, so she uses this to manipulate him into taking the position.

Ben is preoccupied with trying to win the prestigious Robinson Scholarship which will enable him to pay his $300,000 tuition for Harvard Medical School. Micky, who will say anything to avoid losing Ben’s skills, assures the talented student that once he earns $300,000 at blackjack, all ties with the team can be broken. Everything goes smoothly in Las Vegas until a member named Fisher (Jacob Pitts) is almost shot after mouthing off at other casino patrons while intoxicated. Enraged, Micky immediately sends him packing. This incident gets under Cole Williams’ (Laurence Fishburne) skin. Williams oversees security for a number of Vegas casinos where Micky and his various crews have cheated his employers out of millions of dollars over the years. And Williams now has extra incentive to be on his toes, because the casino owners hope to replace him with a facial scanning device. 

Both Spacey and Sturgess deliver excellent performances in 21. Spacey appears natural and convincing as Micky. Ironically, he had doubts that anyone would find him believable, for he knew nothing about card counting or blackjack and can’t even do basic math. But the Oscar winner (for American Beauty) benefited greatly from on-set tutoring by Kyle Morris, a professional card expert. 

Regarding Sturgess, I agree with Luketic’s assessment that he’s spot-on dramatically as well as gifted in the area of comedy. Luketic says he cast Sturgess because of his passion, raw energy, and excitement about his craft -- all of which were evident on a self-made audition tape the actor sent him. Sadly, Kate Bosworth isn’t given much to work with until the film’s dramatic finale. 

Peter Steinfield and Allan Loeb’s screenplay comes across as well-written and suspenseful. Although these screenwriters deserve mild criticism for taking liberties with certain facts by making key characters Caucasian when the individuals depicted in Mezrich’s book are Asian-American, 21 ends up being an absorbing film.

(Released by Columbia Pictures and rated "PG-13" for some violence and partial nudity.)