Is card counting illegal? That seems to be the big question in 21, seemingly the only reason a film has been made about the MIT Blackjack Team. Technically card counting is not illegal, but it's still a practice that can get you roughed up by casino bodyguards and banned for life. The bigger question though is whether or not card counting is moral. In considering the morality of card counting you have to first establish the gambling casino as a fair institution, one that is being unjustly robbed and is thus justified to protect itself in the most savage of ways.

One could probably make this argument, especially Indian casinos that are making a little bit of the white man's blood money back. However, one still has to reconcile the fact that casinos are greed-oriented companies with fixed machines and card systems that all but guarantee you will be losing money rather than making it. Casinos are comparable to phone sex lines that scam your credit card (compare Punch Drunk Love) or at least All You Can Eat buffets that state you have a limit of four plates. Casinos prey off of mankind's weakness and then punish him for following his vice.

Therefore, when I see a gambling movie featuring Kevin Spacey as a corrupt mathematics professor and Laurence Fishburne as a bad-ass casino security leader, (not to mention Ben Campbell as morally conflicted student Jim Sturgess) I think sponsored casino commercial designed to discourage the practice of card counting and upbuild the image of a gambling facility as a high-profile vacation experience. The scenes of mathematical genius involving Sturgess and Spacey seem artificial, though it's nice to see the young Across The Universe star branch out. As for Spacey? Sadly, this actor seems to be caricaturizing himself in recent years, playing snotty and amoral characters with a simulated heart to no particular effect.

21 is directed by Robert Luketic, who previously brought us such masterpieces as Monster-In-Law and Legally Blonde. 21 doesn't rise that much higher on the classy scale, as anyone who would stage a drama in a Vegas casino has their priorities all shuffled up. Hopefully next year's The Ugly Truth starring Gerard Butler will get Luketic out of the celebrity gutter and into some snazzy new clothes. In the meantime, "Winner Winner Chicken Dinner" is not exactly this year's "I Drink Your Milkshake." Nevertheless, it remains an eye-opening film for that type of viewer who has never heard of Vegas. Grade: C-