rated PG-13

For a movie about a team of super-smart MIT students using card-counting skills to rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars in Vegas casinos, “21” is surprisingly average. On the surface, “21” is slick and sexy. The story is about a team of five MIT students who jet to Vegas on the weekends, beat the casinos and make it back in time for class. But under the surface … well, it’s pretty much all surface and very little depth, slightly better than the fake mustaches and colorful wigs the students wear to avoid detection by the casino’s security guards. It’s sort of like “Ocean’s 11,” but with a lot less snap and very little star power.

Leading the team is Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess), who’s determined to get into Harvard Medical School after graduation. The trouble is, he needs at least $300,000 to cover the cost of his dream. Micky Rosa (Kevin Spacey), one of Ben’s professors, notices Ben’s mathematical brilliance and recruits him for an underground blackjack team. Micky provides the bankroll, while the team members use their card-counting abilities and secret signals to find hot tables and break the casino. Ben is reluctant at first, but the lure of easy money, plus the presence of his longtime crush, Jill (Kate Bosworth) on the team, pushes him into the game.

It’s lurid, exciting material, made even better by the fact that the film is based on the book “Bringing Down the House,” the real-life story of MIT’s secret blackjack team. But “21” never feels that exciting or urgent. The screenplay, by Peter Steinfeld and Allan Loeb, fails to dig into the characters and their motivations for joining the team. Apart from Ben, the rest of the players are fairly interchangeable and forgettable. That includes Kate Bosworth as Jill, Ben’s love interest. Bosworth and Sturgess turn in capable performances, but, together, they don’t have much chemistry, which makes their burgeoning romance seem less like a passionate whirlwind and more like lazy scriptwriting.

Kevin Spacey and Laurence Fishburn, who stars as a grizzled casino security chief determined to shut down the team, are bright spots among the cast, but even they don’t shine that brightly. Like the anonymous members of the blackjack team, Spacey and Fishburn’s characters are so similar that it’s hard to care much about them. Spacey’s shady professor resorts to ruthless measures (like failing grades) to get what he wants; Fishburn’s shady security boss resorts to ruthless measures (like backroom beat-downs and illegal surveillance) to keep money in the casino.

The film includes lots of great shots of swank Vegas locales, posh suites and so forth, and director Robert Luketic keeps things moving at a brisk pace. It’s perhaps a little too brisk—the action at the tables generally takes a backseat to the interpersonal conflicts within the team and the half-hearted romance between Ben and Jill. Ben’s journey from poor student to high roller and back is rushed, but that may be just a way to keep the audience from spotting plot holes and inconsistencies. At the beginning of the film, a Harvard Med admissions officer tells Ben he needs to “dazzle” the scholarship committee if he wants to get a full-boat scholarship. “21” is a dazzling story, but, much like a Vegas casino, once all that luster fades, there isn’t much left worth betting on.