Directed by:
Robert LuketicCinematography:
Russell CarpenterComposer:
David SardyCast:
Jim Sturgess, Kevin Spacey, Kate Bosworth, Aaron Yoo, Liza Lapira, Jacob Pitts, Laurence Fishburne, Jack McGee, Helen Carey, Jack Gilpin, Billy Silvia (more)VOD (2)
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Inspired by the true story of MIT students who mastered the art of card counting and took Vegas casinos for millions in winnings. Looking for a way to pay for tuition, Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess) finds himself quietly recruited by MIT's most gifted students in a daring plot to break Vegas. With the help of a brilliant statistics professor (Kevin Spacey) and armed with fake IDs, intelligence and a complicated system of counting cards, Ben and his friends succeed in breaking the impenetrable casinos. Now, his challenge is keeping the numbers straight and staying one step ahead of the casinos before it all spirals out of control. (Columbia/Sony)
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Reviews (9)
Predictable. To make things worse, Sturgess annoyed me the whole time and I wished he'd fall into the depths of hell. Spacey was superb (reminding me of one of my teachers) was Laurence Fishburne. The moralizing at the end was like painted fingernails on a chalkboard, but otherwise it was well shot. Still, the fact remains that there are plenty of better movies about card playing.
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Awful America. It tries to look stylish, but that only works occasionally. The games are fine, though really anyone can see through the stale signals in Vegas these days imho (the one with his hands behind his back is really extreme). Moreover, the believability of the situation isn't helped by the details that during the last bout the heroes put on fake beards and wigs, the kind of cut that only wigs are, and that means professional disguises for everyone. Not to mention the fact that the first thing the main character does when she takes off that wig to escape from security is to run through her hair as she runs so as to be properly fetching, and the heroine then easily outruns the jacked up athletes in stiletto heels in stride. I don't think I can buy that. The nothing new final twist just adds more weight to the question: "Why don't we just watch an installment of Ocean's Eleven?"
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A variations of Ocean’s Eleven with lesser known actors, a more “lovestruck” script, and unlike the mature “old-young” feeling of said film, here we have the aggression and unrestraint of youth. Unfortunately, everything is slightly dampened by the fact that, though the script is efficiently executed and good-looking, and tries to be very cool throughout, which is greatly aided by the city's periphery of lights and casinos, I couldn't resist a certain plot cliché and classically copied values. The question remains as to what extent those things could have been avoided in a story of this caliber.
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The film is, of course, terribly superficial, and as superficial as it gets. The eye-pleasing cinematography and dynamic editing, combined with the seemingly "geeky" plot, are obviously meant to evoke a sense of well combined form and content, and to some extent it succeeds; the film has momentum, the cinematography is modern in the purest sense, and what is very colorful or very expressive is captured right from several angles. Even though my review is largely negative, I certainly didn't have a bad impression from the film, the actors were more than good, a minor amount of psychology was also present, and overall I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. I was perhaps expecting something a little more subtle, some more escalated relationship between the characters themselves, but as I say – the result is good and the film as a whole is definitely worth watching. At least because it's still a pretty interesting topic. :) 3.5 stars
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This pleasant chill-out movie deservedly became a bigger American box office success than what it strived for. It is a lower-budget version of Ocean’s Eleven, bursting with youthful energy and music, and video-like editing combined with cool songs on the soundtrack. It also offers well-written and portrayed characters plus some kind of a wholesome message. In short, it is a little film worthy of a better three stars.
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