How two big fictions of 21 ruin the movie:
SPOILER ALERT! DO NOT READ ON IF YOU PLAN ON SEEING THE MOVIE
Movie: Laurence Fishburne sees the main character counting cards and takes him to a Scorcese-like back room, where he channels his inner Ike Turner and beats the white out of some of the kids.
Book/Real life: The kids’ scam is discovered and they are soon banned from playing blackjack at any casino in the globe. They are not beaten severely about the head and shoulders, but simply made to leave, like a drunk patron.
Comment: Why were they not beaten? Because casinos do not do that anymore. All the casinos can do with regards to card counting, a legal practice, is make the card counters leave. Let me say that again so I can look as angry as I feel about this: IF YOU ARE CAUGHT COUNTING CARDS, AMERICAN CASINOS WILL NOT PHYSICALLY HARM YOU. In the book, two of the kids did get beaten, but that’s because they financed their own card counting scheme and tried it at sketchy casinos outside of the U.S. And frankly, what the movie misses by skipping this detail is the scam’s beauty: the kids were taking money from the casino and were able to get out of the game with their health and their money. Which brings me to my next point:
Movie: Kevin Spacey is the teacher who ends up as this high and mighty puppet master, able to screw with everyone’s personal life and steal their money when they turn against him. He also makes a point of stealing their money when they decide to create their own team.
Book/Real life: There was a teacher, and he ran things, but he was not sinister in any way, other than wanting to make money. In fact, other than being the ringleader, he was a fairly uneventful character, and he never stole any money from any of the players, because as I said THEY ALL LEFT THE SCAM WITH HEFTY BANK ACCOUNTS.
Comment: Maybe it makes for a better story arc to have Kevin Spacey as an evil character, but again, the simple truth is that it’s not real. In the real story there were bad guys, but they had very minor roles and hardly interacted with the main characters. Maybe it’s not as cinematic, but it’s true. And that’s where 21 screwed up and let me down. If I hadn’t snuck into Stop-Loss afterwards, I would’ve demanded my money back. (Very good movie except that I kept waiting for Ryan Phillippe to say “I. Don’t Want. Your life.”)
How two big fictions of 21 ruin the movie:
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1 comment:
I think it woulda been cooler too if they kicked things off with the main character's roommates clearing out every weekend and him having no f-ing clue where they were... only to find out that they were in vegas every weekend. Sure, it may not have made for good cinema when, scene after scene, he's just sitting there playing with his rubix cube on saturday nights, but knowing that they were going to vegas every weekend while the people living with them just assumed they were going home cause they were depressed just seems awesome to me
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