People are voting emotionally.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

I watched this film on a relaxed Sunday evening expecting it to be a light heated flick and an enjoyable game of blackjack, similar to Oceans Eleven or Focus. Instead I found myself feeling anxious the whole time, waiting for the team to fail and inevitably loose all there money. Not the edge of you seat anxious, more the awkward 'why are they doing this' anxious. Of course it came to a relatively satisfying conclusion, as these types of films often do, but I gained little enjoyment from watching this as it was so obvious that everything had to go wrong at some point.Saying this, if you like cards and tense situations then this may be a good film for you. The acting was below average from most of the leads but, as always, Kevin spacey is a delight to watch. A standard plot and some interesting camera work make this an okay film, but there are better, similar films out there.My personal recommendations in order of preference would be:1. Oceans Eleven, 2. Rainman 3. The Hangover 4. Focus

The story is based on a book so it does feel very much grandiose. The movie nicely introduces the basics of the subject of blackjack card counting and showing good depiction of first hand practice. Yet the movie wisely refrains from showing the details of the introduced basics so as not to encourage the practice even more. The added twists nicely start at the exact half time of the movie. Those twists and turns escalated on an accelerated rate well enough until the movie hits us with the double hidden story flow that's revealed as the surprise ending at the finale. The acting overall is decently good. Jim Sturgess portrayed the semi nerd college student with almost perfect expressions. Kevin Spacey lives up to his reputation as one of the ultimate antagonists. Kate Bosworth nicely provided the love interest angle. Aaron Yoo and Liza Lapra also adds well enough to the team setting.

The story revolves around Ben, a brilliant student studying in MIT who is exceptionally good with numbers. He needs $300,000 for Harvard School of Medicine. To get the money, he joins Micky Rosa, a math professor at MIT and four other students who count cards while playing 21 in Casinos. After making a lot of money over multiple trips to Vegas, he ends up making mistakes and gets caught by nasty security guards. Micky takes all the money he won and his MIT degree after the goof-up. Having lost everything, Ben plans to take revenge from Micky.The cast has done a good job to make the movie both engaging and entertaining. Kevin Spacey (Micky) has given an exemplary performance by portraying the unorthodox professor really well. However, the movie does not make much sense inspite of being based on a real life incidence. The team used to return to the same casinos and attracted a lot of unnecessary attention. Even the sign language they used to communicate was fairly obvious and did not change over time. Such childish mistakes from the smart MIT kids makes the plot inconsistent.Overall, it is a good movie to watch and I give it 3 out of 5.

A bunch of brilliant Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) students are trained by a professor with seemingly insidious agendas on the art of card counting in the hopes of beating the age old slogan 'The house always wins' by using mathematics and skill to throw games at the biggest casinos in Las Vegas and taking those high rolling money magnets for all they are worth. Each student on the team must be clever enough to hold their card counting position on the team, discrete enough to keep their craft a secret and desperate enough for funds not to want to leave the team high and dry in case they suddenly develop (ed) a conscience. Kevin Spacey is magnificent (when is he not?) as the conniving professor with Kate Bosworth, Jim Sturgess and Laurence Fishburne in co-starring roles.