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Based on the best seller ‘Bring Down the House’ by Ben Mezrich, this entertaining film recounts the story of a group of college students who won big in Las Vegas casinos in 1993. Under the tutorage of their maths professor Mickey Rosa (Kevin Spacey), six students from Massachusetts Institute of Technology used cheesy disguises, coded signals and their natural brilliance with numbers to work out the odds and make a killing at the blackjack tables.
Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess) has just turned 21. Mickey and love interest Jill (Kate Bosworth) offer him not only a clandestine life full of excitement but also a means to an end – he needs $300,000 to pay for medical studies. This film sucks you into the dream of getting lots of money for relatively little effort. And the best part of the scheme is that it is actually legal, though the casino operators have ways of ensuring that they minimise their losses. The head of security (Lawrence Fishburne) uses some ‘old school Vegas’ tactics to evict clients who make off with too much of the casino’s profits.
Adrian Yoo, Liza Lapira and Jacob Pitts join the cast of beautiful people as the director of Legally Blonde once again makes sure that someone from the underclass gets to make it to the big time. Sometimes these bright people do some very dumb things but the plot twists around the danger of the enterprise and it’s a fair bet you won’t guess the ending.
Directed by Robert Luketic. Rated M.
