21

Watching movies is a bit like meeting people for the first time. Basic information is divulged, pleasantries exchanged – then something tends to happen that takes it to the next level. Maybe they quote from your favourite book. Maybe they make a casually racist remark, enough to suggest something ‘off’ about them. It might be a joke, a turn of phrase, a change of expression. My Moment of Truth with 21 came perhaps 15 minutes in, when our hero Ben (Jim Sturgess) sits in Professor Mickey Rosa (Kevin Spacey)’s college class on “Non-Linear Equations”, and makes a comment that gets Rosa’s attention – so the Prof decides to test Ben’s mathematical skills by setting a special problem, just for him.

He calls it the “game-show host problem”, and it goes like this: You’re on a game-show, with three doors to choose from. Behind one door is a shiny new car. Behind the other doors are goats, i.e. booby-prizes (sorry, goat fans). You make your choice (choosing Door A, for example) – then the host opens one of the other doors (B or C) to reveal a goat. He then asks a question: ‘Do you want to change your mind?’. You might think it makes no difference, since ‘your’ door is still just as likely to be the right one – but in fact it does make a difference, and you’re better off changing your vote to the other remaining door. The reason boils down to the fact that your initial choice was twice as likely to be wrong than right (which, by the way, is not the reason given in the movie) – but the real shocker is that Prof. Rosa should be giving this as a ‘test’ in the first place.

Simply put, the “game-show host problem” is a hoary old chestnut. I first heard it from a well-meaning uncle in high-school, and it’s exactly the kind of thing well-meaning uncles tell geeky teens to hone their maths skills. That someone would’ve made it to college without having come across it is unlikely. That a person in a college maths class would have trouble solving it beggars belief. And that a teacher would use it as a yardstick for the highest level of achievement – that our hero’s friends would gaze at him with awestruck, how-did-you-do-that expressions after he cracks it, that Rosa would call him one of the greatest mathematical minds he’s seen in 14 years of teaching – is just absurd. This is what great mathematical minds prove their mettle on? Hey, great minds, try this one: What weighs more, a ton of steel or a ton of feathers? No hurry, take all the time you need…

I’ve spent a lot of time on a detail, but this was the moment that confirmed what I’d already suspected – viz. that 21, based on the true story of six MIT students who took the Las Vegas casinos for millions, is dumbed-down beyond recognition. There are hints of this even from the opening credits, massive close-ups of cards down which the camera glides as if down a freeway, but I thought it was just being slick. In fact 21 is idiotic, its box-office success – fuelled by the global poker craze, though the game here is blackjack rather than poker – proving only the filmgoing public’s high tolerance for idiocy.

The plot has Spacey recruiting his brightest and best in a complicated card-counting scam – except, as shown here, the scam is resolutely uncomplicated, indeed so simple you wonder why it takes a bunch of whiz-kids to operate it. All it takes is to “keep the count”, adding 1 point (in your head) when a low card appears, subtracting 1 when a picture card appears. That’s all. The rest is knowing how to bet, which any seasoned gambler will know more about than a college kid, however brilliant. Meanwhile Spacey looks suave and pours himself a Scotch, while our hero – who only joined to win much-needed money for medical school – jots down his winnings in a notebook helpfully titled “Money for Harvard” before being seduced by the high-roller lifestyle. We also get casino-security chief Laurence Fishburne who briefly appears, right on cue, when Ben is assured the scam is perfectly safe, shown beating up some unfortunate card-counter: “You think you can beat the System? Well, this [fist rammed in face] is the System beating you back!”. He then disappears for the next half-hour.