21 Opening Analysis

21 (Robert Luketic, 2008)

The opening to 21 is 4 minutes 43 seconds long. It starts with the Columbia Pictures ident which fades to black.

The picture is yellow which turns out to be an extreme close up of an animated playing card. The camera then moves around the card and starts zooming out to show a King of Spades on a casino card table (close up) and then the Ace of Spades drops onto the King.

There is then a male voice that says 'winner, winner, chicken dinner', which is a quite old saying from Vegas Casinos when a blackjack had been dealt. The voice explains the saying and then says that he'd heard the phrase at least 14 times that night. This conotes to the audience that the man was doing well on blackjack. He then continues by explaining that he is counting cards and how he's doing it.

While he's saying this there is animation of going around the card table showing stacks of chips and the different hands. It also cuts to close ups of the dealing shoe with cards coming out of it, a card floating across the screen and a man's eyes.

It then shows close ups of a man putting on a fake moustache, combing his hair back and putting on glasses. It then cuts back to the close up of the mans eyes at the table which connects the voice to the man.

Through all of this animation there is non-diegetic sound which is exagerated sound of whats being shown. For example there are loud swooshing noises when the camera moves fast.

It then shows casino security coming after him and he runs away. While this is happening the voice over (of the man) says that card counting was how his life got into trouble. The security guard runs right up to the camera so it goes black and then that scene ends. The non-diegetic music also stops.

An arial, establishing shot of some rowers comes on and time to pretend by MGMT starts playing. Some credits are shown in a white, capital, serif font. This denotes that the film will be quite serious and not a comedy. The camera continues to show Boston, MA and MIT. It then zooms into a medium shot of a young adult on a bicycle, probably going to MIT.

The shot then overlaps to another establishing, extreme long shot of Boston. It then cuts to a long shot of the rowers going under the harvard bridge. It then cuts back to a medium long shot of the man on the bike. The shots switch between the environment and the man, showing showing an extreme long shot of the building, their tennis courts and Boston.

Finally the man gets to MIT and it shows a few close ups of the building and him going into it.

All of this denotes to the audience that the character is a very clever student at one of the best schools but he lives quite an uneventful, quiet life.