For a movie about high-stakes gambling in Vegas, you’re ironically not gambling an awful lot sliding 21 into the DVD player. It’s a safe, by the book morality tale of a mathematics genius (the deeply, deeply uninspiring Jim Sturgess) joining a team of card counters run by his university statistics professor (Kevin Spacey). From the moment Sturgess’ character bumbles into the operation it’s clear exactly where you’re headed: things will start off moothly, then there’ll be some sort of crisis – but in the end everyone will get their just desserts and Kevin Spacey will get his fingers cut off. And by the time Spacey does get his comeuppance the odds are you’ll be grateful – he’s absolutely awful here, playing the smug professor with about as much conviction as a poodle in a waistcoat on a bouncy ball. 

 Predictability alone isn’t necessarily a death sentence for a movie (see The Lord of the Rings), but when the direction is inept and the acting this insipid, it’s hard to maintain interest. Aussie director Robert Luketic (who had previously made the upper-end-of-okay Legally Blonde) seems to have little idea how to tell the story without it all coming across as a lost straight-to-video release of the early 90s. Sit this round out.