21

I saw 21 over the weekend. I had to check it out since I pitched a very similar story years ago. (It's a hit, by the way--pretty good considering how weak the reviews were. And Stop-Loss flopped, of course.)

Actually, I'd heard rumors of card counting black jack teams from MIT and based my pitch on it. Then Ben Mezrich wrote his bestseller Bringing Down The House and this movie's based on it.

It was interesting to see how the film handled the same basic story. (Of course, I thought my take was better.) They did a reasonable job explaining how counting and team play works, but it was still pretty silly. For instance, the professor who runs the team tries to convince the new guy to join and the new guy's all whiny about it. (I cut that part from my pitch--I hate the scene where the hero doesn't want to join up to do something everyone knows he's gonna do). Soon after, we have the moment where the established team is trying to count cards and failing and, of course, the hero comes back and he can count perfectly. Look, if you've got a team already set up, they can count. Furthermore, Kevin Spacey as the leader assigns the hero to be one of the big players who handles the big money, because the others aren't good enough. Once again, you can either count or you can't--each member of the team should be able to handle the big money as easily as any other.