Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess) is a higly intelligent student at M.I.T, a college in Boston. His goal is to get a scolarship at Harvard School of Medicine, he ticks all the boxes, however they want someone who “dazzles” and “jumps off the page” Ben doesn’t, he’s too ordinary. Unfortunatley this means without the scolarship he’s going to need $300,000 to pay for Harvard. His talent in mathematics causes him to be spotted by Professor Micky Rosa (Kevin Spacey) who wants Ben to join his team of four other mathematics experts. This team has been taught by the Professor how to turn the odds of Blackjack in their favour using mathematics. This could be the key for Ben to get into Harvard.
Personally, I enjoyed this movie a lot, however the script did not have enough depth for me. Jim Sturgess gave an excellent performance, he and Kate Bosworth made the movie. Not only was Sturgess’ acting brilliant doing the shy nerd bit with no problem, the young Brit, also pulled off a concievable Boston accent. Although the script wasn’t bad as I said earlier, with a neat twist towards the end, it needed some more depth, it was slightly too glitzy and it needed to have had some more gritty moments to it, of which it had none. Sturgess is obviously an extremely talented actor and I would like to see him in a role where he is more pushed and in a much deeper movie.
Rating:
