21 Movie Analysis

Human nature loves the thrill of the chase. Including the chase for money and success, that is why movies and books about gambling do so well. There was a movie in 2008 that did very well called 21. The movie was mostly fictional but it was based off of real events. There was a team that included MIT students but also included students from Princeton and Harvard that chased the money and beat the house at blackjack by becoming card counting teams. In real life there were multiple teams and they were formed and worked from 1979 until the early 1990s. They were set up like a business and their business definitely made money.
The man who brainstormed and began this group was not a M.I.T graduate or professor. Bill Kaplan was a Harvard Business …show more content…
He was based off of a real student named Jeff Ma. The character in the movie wanted the money so that he could go to medical school. In real life Jeff Ma had wanted to go to Harvard Medical but he didn’t need to play blackjack to earn the money. In Jeff Ma’s life blackjack and the money he was able to make from it actually made him choose against medical school. The movie also fictionalized a few things about his background. For instance his mother’s life savings wasn’t pooled so that he could go to medical school. His father is also quite alive and well where he was dead in the movie. The fact is that Jeff Ma brought his parents and his sister to the premier of 21as his guests. Another of the fictionalized aspects in the movie was a love interest for the main character of Ben. Jill had been another player on the team that Ben had fallen for. The character was based off of Jane Willis; a woman Jeff Ma had recruited onto the team. He was friends with both her and her boyfriend and these two friends never shared anything more than …show more content…
He has a real life alter ego by the name of Mike Aponte. Aponte would agree, one of the points the movie got right, was that the M.I.T. teams would carry money on their bodies to get through airport security. Mike said that if they carried chips in their carryon bags, that security would not be able to tell how many chips they were carrying. However, the movie did not get everything correct. In the movie Fisher was seen being beat by the head of security that was trying to catch the M.I.T. team. This didn’t happen. Aponte has said in numerous interviews that he was never manhandled by security. Aponte is one of the players that started his own team after Strategic Investments was shut down. He continued playing the game until he was blocked from playing in most casinos. Today he is still earning his livelihood from the game. He has moved over to the other side of the table. He is now training people how to play the game. Aponte also consults with the casinos. He is in fact working with some of the people who worked so diligently to stop the M.I.T. blackjack teams and put them out of