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As I predicted, 21 was boring for me when it got bogged down in math and card-playing; but if you read my preview, you know that's not why I went. While I assumed Kevin Spacey would own the spotlight when present on screen, which he did, it's Jim Sturgess' portrayal of Ben Campbell, MIT student and Harvard Medical School hopeful, that lingers in my brain after the credits have rolled and I've driven home. Serving both as the name-equivalent of Blackjack and the age of our young antihero, 21 is really a story of coming of age, and gaining "real life experience."

In Ben's opening interview with Harvard, he's told that he needs to jump off the pages with his essay for why he's special, and we know that he's lived a perfectly normal life. When his natural state begins to change due to the deceit and convergence of the Blackjack gang, we know that he's gaining real life experience but his life may be lost in the process. And while I mean "soul" here, it's quite possible he could've lost his "biological existence" as well. Ben deceives his mother (and himself, a little), abandons his friends, and crosses boundary after boundary that we know he's previously been unwilling to cross.

Ben's life experience is about understanding addiction, too, because he tells Jill (Kate Bosworth) that he is playing to earn the $300,000 for Harvard and then he's out. But he learns to love the life they live on the weekends, and it sucks him in. It's the age-old story of sin, how something good at first or something done wrong drags you in until you don't notice that you've lost yourself. Unfortunately, Ben's own lessons don't occur until we've seen him go down the long, slippery slope. And along the way, he's been drubbed by Spacey's all-too-experienced teacher/mastermind.

As others have mentioned, the film ties itself up well, and redemption is had for a price. I still wasn't totally "sold" on the movie, though, until the end credits started to play, and The Rolling Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want" boomed out of the theater speakers. I wasn't overly familiar with the song, but looking up the lyrics confirmed something for me: "You can't always get what you want; but if you try sometimes, you might just find you get what you need."

Ben's story is one of searching for something, discovering a means that he thought would get it, losing it all, and gaining the world that he wanted from the very beginning.

Our lives in God's will can resemble Ben's story: we seek for something so hard that we lose sight of who we are and what our initial motivation is, and seemingly grasp what we're desperate for, only to lose it all and more. Then, out of the ashes of our misshapen dream's demise, God's plan rises up. I read about that experience in Phil Vischer's book, and I've seen it in my own life.

21 wasn't great, but it was entertaining, and had some teachable moments. You could roll the die on some other film, or take the safe bet where you might learn something.