21: Bringing Down the House

Intrigued by the 2008 movie 21 directed by Robert Luketic, I decided to read Bringing Down the House. For the most part, the movie sticks with the basic events in the book. Kevin Lewis, a bright, young M.I.T. student has a couple of friends, Fisher and Martinez, that have dropped out of school but always seem to have plenty of cash. Kevin's friends recruit him to join their Blackjack team.

The system works well for a while, but then some of the casinos start sharing information about card counters, and the team finds that they get banned from a casino almost as soon as they begin playing. Micky finds out that someone on the team sold a list of all the M.I.T. players (including other teams Micky financed) to a private investigation firm for $25,000. For a while disguises fool the casinos, and the team continues to make a profit. But soon even the disguises don't fool the casinos as the casinos employ the latest face- and gait-recognition technology.

The movie does a good job at recreating the emotional tension that Mezrich develops in the book. So, unless you have a keen desire to know the "true story," I think that the movie does in two hours what it takes the book 300 pages to produce. The book gives details like the fact that team gambles all over the country and not just in Vegas, but the movie condenses the emotional states that Mezrich wanted to convey into a much more intense experience.