Warning possible spoilers
bluewhale said:
I think you're completely missing the point. I'm not upset that the story didn't follow what the actual MIT people did. Or even that the characters aren't accurate to real life. They are after all telling a story and should feel free to change it however they like. HOWEVER when you do tell a story it should fit properly with itself. So when i watch a movie like mr and mrs smith and look at the final scene where brangalina are completely surrounded by 20 fully armed men and then they proceed to run out into the middle of them and kill each one of them with pistols I find the whole thing ridiculous and think its a bad movie.
The same kind of thing applies here. When i see a team who's strategy relies on pretending to not know each other in a casino walk into that casino and glance at each other ever 5 min I find it ridiculous. Theres a ton of other things like them actually discussing basic strategy the night before they go to vegas (having supposedly trained for weeks)... let alone mickey agreeing that on the wrong BS. And ofcourse the biggest one is the fact that Laurence Fishbourne's character assaulted and confined several people through the movie and nobody thought of calling the police. The story simply didn't work with itself. I don't care that they tried to make it different from the original story. In fact I think it would be cool to write a new story. But it must work.
One thing I couldn't help but notice was a principle of political correctness that has existed for the past 30 years was broken by this movie- there was one black guy in it and he was evil. (But at least he could count!)
Overall, I got exactly what I expected from the movie. You'd have to actually be an AP to make it any more accurate. And it then wouldn't be a good movie to anyone but an AP. And you know how rare we are.
If I were to make a movie about AP, it would be about the different kinds of minds, the psychologies that exist in the trade, and how they relate to what we need to do at the table. Eliot Jacobson touches on some of it in his book.
In terms of accuracy, I would at least hope it is absolutely inaccurate. Let's see: foolish cash handling practices, temper tantrum at the table, outrageous signaling, violating the Freemasonry standard for recruiting (the recruit is supposed to seek out the organization not the other way around), getting involved with females when you are playing, playing in an illegal club, going into a back room without a fight. I certainly wouldn't comingle my bankroll with these guys. Anybody ever hear of getting into a good count, getting your hands in, then going next door? It wouldn't make for a very interesting movie though.