21: a review in five parts

Gambling: Card counting is a system where you track the cards that have been played until your chance of winning (usually 49%) is around 51%. Then you bet like a drunk monkey until your chance falls back below 50%. The movie represented a hot deck by having the player win anywhere from 5 to 700 hands in a row. Las Vegas is going to make a lot of money off this film.

Cast: Laurence Fishburne was disdainful and menacing, Kevin Spacey was geeky and menacing - right in the wheelhouse for both of them. Kate Bosworth did an amazing job of almost making me believe that she fell in love with the male lead in her next scene after beating him with the just friends bat.

Asians: I've already commented on the disappearance of Asian leads from the plot, but I was very pleased with the two Asian parts they did include. There was the kleptomaniac goofball and the nondescript but cute chick. I was expecting to see old dudes with Fu Manchus smoking opium in the Chinatown scene, but I guess the director decided against it. They even briefly showed the Asians on the sides of the blackjack team in the slo-mo walking scenes, until the shot tightened around the honkies.

Las Vegas: It was a lot cleaner than I remembered.

The actual movie: Mediocre, but entertaining.

21

This weekend there's a movie coming out based on Bringing Down the House, the book about the MIT blackjack team. The protagonist is an Asian cat named Kevin. Young Asian actors... well, they could go with John Cho of Harold and Kumar fame, or maybe Parry Shen from Better Luck Tomorrow, or...

Jim Sturgess. What the shit, Hollywood? This is your Asian MIT undergrad? Did you run out of Asian actors after you filled all of the comic relief, nerd, and exotic-and-cute-but-shy chick roles?

Was David Carradine not available?