Everyone loves a good movie. And everyone (at least everyone who visits this blog) loves blackjack. Now take blackjack and make a story out of it and make it into a good movie and you get the new movie being filmed by Columbia Pictures – 21.

Of course I’m just guessing, or rather hoping, that the movie will turn out to be a good one. After all it will be pretty disappointing to wait for a blackjack movie and just find out that it’s plain crappy. I’m not so worried about it though since “21? is based on the book “Bringing Down the House”, which all blackjack players know is about the story of the famous MIT Team. The story is already good and they just need to make sure that they turn it into an engaging enough movie. Unless they hira a really bad director and equally bad actors then there really isn’t anything they can do to make the story bad (unless they change thestory that is).

So far though no one needs to to worry about getting a bad director or bad actors because with the Australian Robert Luketic directing the film and with people like Kate Bosworth, Laurence Fishburne and Kevin Spacey to act in it the film is destined to be a good one. The main character who acts as the 20-year-old MIT grad Kevin Lewis is a relatively unknown actor named Jim Sturgess. But if he got the main role he’s probably a good one and this could even be his big break.

For those who don’t know about the book “Bringing Down the House” or at least about the MIT Team (under what rock did you just crawl out of?) the movie is about a group of people from MIT who formed a blackjack team and won millions from casinos before they were caught and of course banned. The MIT Team like all the other great blackjack teams won their millions by using card-counting but with a twist (this is team play after all). Since they’re all pretty smart or let’s say more than smart (they’re from MIT after all) they pretty much understood the mathematics and didn’t fall apart because they eventually lost their money but because of internal disputes.

In the movie we can expect to see (or at least I hope to see) some of the moves the MIT Team utilized to hide the fact of their being advantage players or even better a team of advantage players from the ever watchful eyes of the pit bosses. I’m pretty sure they will touch on card-counting but am pretty skeptical about seeing anything that will explain the finer things or advanced strategies since this is a movie and not a tutorial after all. I mean blackjack players trying to learn card counting have a hard time enough getting the hang of card counting what more can you expect from the average movie goer. Nevertheless the movie should prove to be enjoyable if only for that fact the blackjack players will find themselves another reason to daydream about being as great as these players.