A Serious Problem with the Movie 21

About a year ago my mom called me on the phone and said there was this book that I HAD to read. It was called Bringing Down the House written by Ben Mezrich. It tells the story about a club at MIT who through the guidance of a professor learn to totally dupe major casinos. The book is also based on a true story. The team devise a set of signals so they could tell the other members what tables were hot and which ones were not. They also had phrases with key words to tell the other members how hot the table was or not. It was a really good book. It came from the perspective of one of the members and he talked about how he had to hide all this money he was making, all the alternate identities he had, and the problems they ran into with casinos who noticed that certain people were getting too good. Card counting is not illegal but if you get noticed, casinos will ban you.

Now one of the major things the author pointed out was that the members of the team were all Asian. This was important to the team because a Caucasian man throwing down a lot of money would get noticed while an Asian man throwing down a lot of money would not get noticed. Gambling is huge in the Asian culture. My mom keeps telling me how her manicurists, who are Asian, go on these bus trips to Mohegan Sun on a monthly basis and spend tons of money and that these bus trips are HUGELY popular.

Here is where my issues begin. I heard a while back that there was a movie coming out about the book and I got really excited. This was one of my favorite books. Then I saw the trailor. A white kid playing the lead role. A white girl playing another member of the team. WHAT??!!! How could the studio change such a HUGE part of the book. Granted, the people playing members of the team are Kate Bosworth from "Underworld" fame and Jim Sturgess who has done mostly TV, so they are pretty to look at. And the amazing Kevin Spacey is playing the role of the "mentor" professor. HOWEVER, it was such an important point that all the members of the team be Asian in order to not be noticed. I am very curious to see how the film gets around this HUGE elephant in the room without ruining the story. Or they might just go that route......of ruining the story.

The movie 21 is set for release March 28th. If you've read the book, be prepared for some major differences from the book.