Shuffling between cautionary tale and misbegotten visceral pleasure, 21 is a glossy rendering of the spurious 1990s reputed MIT “Blackjack Team.” Based on the book Bringing Down the House, the film deals onlookers TV commercial-paced, hyperactive editing, a throbbing (and grating) techno-centric soundtrack, and cumbersome narration in an effort to make bright and shrewd collegians playing high stakes cards reflexively exciting.

Plying artistic license, the true story is indubitably compelling enough to warrant photographing. Underhanded risk-taking atmosphere is a case study of glamorized real life imitating artful pastimes with two or more players — e.g., The Cincinnati Kid (1965), Risky Business (1983), and Rounders (1998) — sexed up for lubricated gratification. Familiar ringing “true story” Hollywoodization bequeaths a sense of reprisal, leaving a greater predestining than it should.

Jim Sturgess is Ben Campbell, a math and statistics whiz kid on the cusp of graduating from Boston’s MIT. Desperate to win a scholarship to finance his bid to attend Harvard Medical School following graduation, Ben’s dream to become a doctor is unreachable without the required $300,000 to pay tuition fees and living expenses. The product of a single mom income, the egghead doesn’t have the money to pay for grad school.

After Ben dazzles one of his MIT teachers, Prof Micky Rosa (Kevin Spacey) with his smarts, the roguish instructor invites him to a join a secret club, consisting of four fellow students who count cards — gaining odds by mentally calculating the probability of advantages — when playing the most popular card game in the world, blackjack. Acting as a cohesive team of skilled double-dealers, manipulating verbal and hand signals that would make a veteran third base baseball coach dizzy, the elite brotherhood seductively informs Ben that the game is statistically beatable. Harvard and hormones calling, the bait proves alluring to Ben when it's made clear that he can reap hundreds of thousands of dollars by responding to the gang’s call to join them at the casino tables in Las Vegas on weekends. With luck, he might score the girl of his dreams to boot. Ben reticently joins with the qualifier that he’ll only participate until he accumulates the $300,000 needed for Harvard.

The English Sturgess, sounding and looking like a wiry, pastier version of Tobey Maguire, emits intelligence enough that auds can easily imagine him cutting a path across MIT’s brainiac campus. Lost in translation, when the lights dim, are carnal cravings that stall as Ben pushes romantic affections with Jill (Kate Bosworth), a female member of the squad. The prominent subplot, with the couple sharing wanting gazes, soft kisses, and horizontal interludes, rings hollow as the pair emits palpable uncomfortableness when caressing each other. Jill tells Ben that she never gets involved with team members — so why Ben? He’s crazy brilliant — yeah — but whatever cerebral leaps Ben makes, Sturgess inadvertently tempers with maladroit libido. At best, he’s asexual in the shadow of a physically luscious Jill/Bosworth. The contrast undermines the increasingly perilous risks that Jill takes as Ben becomes disagreeably intoxicated with the escalating sexual and financial risks associated with the hand he’s holding.