Jennifer Fallon - the Official Site

In the mid-1990s a bunch of very clever, brainiacs from MIT, made a killing in Las Vegas counting cards at Blackjack. This is the movie based loosely on Ben Mezrich’s non-fiction book (Bringing down the House) that turned out to be only very loosely based on the truth.

In this version, working-class mathematics genius and MIT student, Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess), finds himself accepted into Harvard Medical School, but short by an awkward $300,000 for the tuition. Fortunately (or unfortunately, as it turns out) his mathematical ability brings him to the attention of MIT professor, Mickey Rosa, (Kevin Spacey). Rosa runs a secret club of brainiacs who spend their weekends in Vegas winning at blackjack. Convinced to join the club by hottie whiz-kid, Jill Taylor (Kate Bosworth), Ben proves to be a star pupil with the ability to keep his head (and the figures in them) even under extreme duress, and soon becomes the key player of the team.

Ben initially joins the group to earn his Harvard tuition, but soon gets lulled by the fabulous lifestyle, the girls and the money, finally running afoul of both Rosa and the thuggish Vegas security chief, Cole Williams (Laurence Fishburne), when he starts to gamble on the odds, rather than calculate them.

English actor Sturgess does a credible job as the naïve Campbell, lured into the life of a high rolling gambler, while trying to maintain his geeky-exterior (and his grades) during the week at school, aided by the starkly contrasting cinematography of sun-drenched Vegas and snow-bound Boston. Kate Bosworth is more convincing here as a college student/gambling whiz than she ever was as Lois Lane, and Laurence Fishburne is genuinely frightening as the old-school Vegas security chief, who deals out reprimands with a be-ringed fist to card-counters (which technically isn’t illegal) in the vast and lonely basement of his casino. As usual, Spacey rules the screen, and it’s to Sturgess’s credit that he manages to hold his own against both Fishburne and Spacey.

The only thing I found completely unbelievable in this film, in fact, was the scene where Ben and his geek friends take time out from their robot-building project — about which they’d been obsessing for over a year, and which they were on a deadline for a prestigious robotics competition — to shoot hoops in the gym with all the jocks and the beautiful people. Real geeks don’t come up for food very often. They certainly don’t take time out for sport. 

Directed by the sure hand of Robert Luketic (Legally Blonde, Monster-in-Law, Win a Date with Tad Hamilton) the film proves to be — at least until the closing scenes — a slightly implausible, albeit highly entertaining, morality tale. Although based very loosely on fact, the story has been enhanced for the screen (as was the book), but then, Hollywood never lets the truth get in the way of a good story. Basketball-playing geeks, notwithstanding, the movie delivers a solid couple of hours of entertainment and a fascinating suggestion for a career option for those aimless souls out there with an IQ of over 150, wondering what they might do with their lives.