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BY MAGGIE SCOTT

In the latest sin city-set film, 21, what happens in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas. Specifically, hundreds of thousands of dollars in blackjack winnings make their way from the tables at Hard Rock Café and other casinos to the drop ceiling panels of the MIT dorm room of Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess).

Ben’s a senior of limited financial means whose discovery that scholarships to Harvard Medical School get rewarded to candidates who can “dazzle” with a unique “life experience” has made him vulnerable to the get-rich-quick designs of his linear equations class instructor, Mickey Rosa (Kevin Spacey).

Recognizing Ben’s “Pentium chip” quality brain, Mickey recruits him for a special math club. Because he’s persona non grata in Vegas because of his own history of using the highly-detested, but legal skill of card counting to make a killing, Mickey assembles talented kids looking for the kicks and the cash their card skills will earn them as his surrogate.

Working as a team, with memorized verbal cues and hand signals, they are able to turn the game’s odds in their favor. Mickey insists the kids adhere to his rules and stay under the radar. But, as the thrill of winning and the excitement of romance with his teammate, Jill (Kate Bosworth), get a rationalized grip on him, Ben starts to lose some of the standards his mother and old friends set for him, like honesty and loyalty.

Egos and immaturity begin to jinx the system, and the house of cards is in danger of toppling. Inevitably, the team draws the attention of loss prevention expert, Cole Williams (Laurence Fishburne); a man from Mickey’s past who has lucked into the perfect person to trick the former card shark into paying the piper.

A pleasant enough caper, based on the fact-based book “Bringing Down the House,” has plot disconnects that feel like cell phone dropped calls. Las Vegas has never looked more prim and proper, college kids have never acted so scrubbed and the colorful game of 21 has never looked so dull (despite swirling, slo-mo, garish sequences that come off like a commercial for Lumiere Place).

Rated PG-13 for violence, sexual content, partial nudity.
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