YouHeart I gave it a 7.5 out of 10

Peereddi I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

Sienna-Rose Mclaughlin The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Brenda The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

paulclaassen Excellent film about an ordinary guy with a gift for reading cards. The film is beautifully filmed with a great soundtrack. I don't play Blackjack but nevertheless found the film very appealing and a pleasure to watch. Kevin Spacey is great as usual, and Jim Sturgess is very good as Ben, with the gift for reading cards. The acting is believable, although I must admit some of the other characters did not have strong personalities and seemed redundant at times. I loved the fantastic twist ending. All and all, this was a great film!

Rameshwar IN Reviewed November 2011Winner winner chicken dinner, a lot of cheese dripping all over. Featuring good looking leads, a real big mentor and a simple script that may not go too wrong. The director messed everything up spectacularly. Trying to pull in every known stereotype attached to the game and genre, way too long in duration and he may better end up being known as the director who brought the worst in Spacey. Features a typical brilliant boy (Jim Sturgess), with an ordinary life and in need of money/scholarship to get into Harvard Medical school. He realizes his scholarship is in jeopardy and at the same time gets noticed by a shrewd professor (Kevin Spacey) who offers him a spot in his team that specializes in counting cards to beat the dealer in Blackjack. He accepts the offer for two reasons. 1) As a means to an end. 2) His long time crush Jill (Kate Bosworth) is in the team. Finally he ends up getting sucked by the glitz, glamour and easy money of Las Vegas. How he gets his act together comprises the rest of the story. Extremely cheesy with enormous number of redundant scenes featuring characters that are mere caricatures. Cinematography is good, background score is peppy, editing is slick and the lead character is believable. Kevin Spacey has given the worst performance I have seen of him and was a total letdown. They could've added a little more fun while presenting the Blackjack games than just the calculations in the minds of the geniuses that we should imagine. I was a bit disconnected with that.I could not think of any recommendation like 'Watch it only if ...'.. nothing comes to mind. Just drop it. It's easy and more fun.

Parker Lewis If I watch a movie based on a book, I prefer to see it before reading. Here's a movie I watched after reading Ben Mezrich's Bringing Down the House, and I wish it was vice-versa. The book was compelling but the movie was sort of okay, and I guess it tried to be a piece of art on its own.Much has been made about the "whitewashing" of the cast, as some of the real life college students in Ben's book are of Chinese descent. The accusations of whitewashing are fair enough, and it's a shame the cast wasn't more reflective of the real life characters. But hey, Hollywood is unfortunately replete with such whitewashing type examples. Valkyrie I don't think had any Germans in the cast. It was pretty much Americans and Brits playing Germans. The director wasn't German! Also in Schindler's List, same deal, no Germans in the lead roles. Similarly, Hogan's Heroes didn't have any Germans in the cast - in fact quite ironically some of the Nazis were played by Jewish actors. Also in in 'Allo 'Allo, no Germans were featured - all Brits played the Germans. Nary a German actor in Raiders of the Lost Ark. So unfortunately Germans are being whitewashed out of casting roles sadly.

peeyushagarwal1994 The story revolves around Ben, a brilliant student studying in MIT who is exceptionally good with numbers. He needs $300,000 for Harvard School of Medicine. To get the money, he joins Micky Rosa, a math professor at MIT and four other students who count cards while playing 21 in Casinos. After making a lot of money over multiple trips to Vegas, he ends up making mistakes and gets caught by nasty security guards. Micky takes all the money he won and his MIT degree after the goof-up. Having lost everything, Ben plans to take revenge from Micky.The cast has done a good job to make the movie both engaging and entertaining. Kevin Spacey (Micky) has given an exemplary performance by portraying the unorthodox professor really well. However, the movie does not make much sense inspite of being based on a real life incidence. The team used to return to the same casinos and attracted a lot of unnecessary attention. Even the sign language they used to communicate was fairly obvious and did not change over time. Such childish mistakes from the smart MIT kids makes the plot inconsistent.Overall, it is a good movie to watch and I give it 3 out of 5.