Sunday Movie Experience

To abstract Manooh's thoughts about the movie: It's probably the longest commercial for a city ever.

The plot: Mathematical genius (Jim Sturgess as Ben Campbell) needs a lot of money to study at Harvard medical school. He is seduced by a classmate beauty to count cards in Las Vegas for his daytime teacher/nighttime "criminal" brain (Kevin Spacey as Prof. Micky Rosa). Everything seems to be honkey dory..

Sometimes you sense rudimentary attempts to make the movie deeper in a psychological way - showing the slow transition between fun and curiosity of gambling and the Las Vegas lifestyle to getting dragged too deep into it and finally completely loosing their own identity. But all of this is still shown through rose-coloured glasses. There are just not enough mind games, personal conflicts, psychological and physiological punishments. But maybe this wasn't the creator's intend anyway. Maybe they just wanted to focus on the dull card counting part?

Anyway, the movie seems to be just another contract work for a random director, "stick to the script and we are fine"-flair, without a personal touch. And with a below average Kevin Spacey (who might kept in mind the low skills of his co-actors) and Lawrence Fishburne's character drowning in the story, you can still enjoy the movie if you have low or no expectations at all.

That said I am left with head-shaking questions:
Why did they always go into the same casino?
Why did they use so obvious hand signs? and
How is a black wig and a fake beard keeping you disguised in a facial recognition software?

Viva Las Vegas!!

The Hoff says: I seem to have had some trouble in Las Vegas too