‘21’ is fun but gambles away its source book’s intrigue

When the makers of the blackjack drama “21” stepped up to the table to place their bets, they opted to play it safe.

In this extremely loose adaptation of Ben Mezrich’s nonfiction tome “Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions,” screenwriters Peter Steinfeld and Allan Loeb have buffed down the story’s rougher edges into a Hollywood fairy tale.

What might have been a complex story dealing with greed and high-stakes betrayal among the young intellectual elite in America’s gaming playground is instead treated as a slick, glossy romp – one young man’s wacky escapades in procuring tuition for Harvard Medical School.

Putting aside any disappointment that the filmmakers didn’t find something more challenging within the material, “21” does have its charms. Director Robert Luketic (“Legally Blonde”) has made the increasingly rare two-hour movie that actually feels shorter, and the cast – given the limitations of their characters – is across-the-board enjoyable.

The book’s Asian American protagonist (Jeffrey Ma, the book’s “Kevin Lewis,” has a cameo as a dealer in the movie) has been changed into the generically “all-American” Ben Campbell – who, with typical Hollywood irony, is played by a Brit, “Across the Universe’s” Jim Sturgess. Campbell is a math whiz who slaves away at his studies, puts in time at a men’s store earning $8 an hour and hangs out with his nerdier buddies Miles (Josh Gad) and Cam (Sam Golzari).

Ben’s counting on landing a scholarship to pay for Harvard Med. The tuition is hanging over his head when he’s recruited by one of his professors, Micky Rosa (the evangelically persuasive Kevin Spacey), for a crack team of gifted students who spend their weekends counting cards in Las Vegas.

The film spends an inordinate amount of time explaining the methods Micky’s team uses to beat the house, and though their elaborate disguises, signals and codes are fun to watch, the card counting itself is not especially cinematic.

The team – played by Kate Bosworth, Jacob Pitts, Aaron Yoo and Liza Lapira – projects a swagger that is understandably attractive to Ben, but none of their characters are fleshed out beyond a few running gags. Their fates subsequently carry little dramatic weight.

Similarly, Ben’s transformation from timid student to big player fails to produce the rush it should. Laurence Fishburne, as menacing casino security consultant Cole Williams, is suitably intimidating, but the pressure that should build as he closes in on the MIT gang never registers as anything other than inevitable.

Luketic deploys abundant effects and a propulsive soundtrack to juice the action, but the reliance on style frequently overwhelms substance. Scenes that should resonate with tension are weakened by the whiz-bang visuals and what reads like a thriller in Mezrich’s book plays out as melodrama in “21.”

kevin.crust@latimes.com

“21.” MPAA rating: PG-13 for some violence, and sexual content including partial nudity. Running time: 1 hour, 58 minutes. In general release.