Top 10 Gambling Movies – 21- 9th Place

Updated: 2025.12.11

21 is a 2008 American film directed by Robert Luketic, starring Kevin Spacey, Jim Sturgess, Kate Bosworth, and Laurence Fishburne, which presents the true story of the MIT Blackjack Team.

Ben Campbell is a brilliant but poor student from a working-class family studying at MIT in Boston, striving for success. He wants to become a doctor with the help of a scholarship so he can transfer to Harvard Medical School.

One evening, Ben’s unconventional math professor, Micky Rosa, introduces him to a unique club whose members — Jill, Choi, Kianna, and Fisher — have been trained by Professor Rosa in the technique of card counting.

Driven by the desire to make money, Ben joins this small group on a weekend trip to Las Vegas, where they can win hundreds of thousands of dollars at blackjack using only coded conversations and hand signals.

Ben knows he cannot afford his tuition, so at first he only wants to earn the money he needs for Harvard. But in the end, he fulfills Jill’s prediction: he is overwhelmed by greed and arrogance. He lets his emotions get in the way and puts the team at risk, ending up on the radar of a brutal casino security enforcer, Code Williams.