SALT LAKE CITY — OK, I think we get it. Las Vegas is by and large a facade full of glitz and glamour, a cesspool of hedonistic pleasures to which people think they can escape but will ultimately bite them in the backside. It has become Hollywood’s favorite backdrop for stories on the hubris of man, a way to show the greed and pride in all of us and the nasty results that follow if one chooses to pursue them. We get it.

Unfortunately, “21″, the latest movie to tackle Sin City, adds little of anything new to what we know of the Vegas phenomenon. The film stars Jim Sturgess (”Across The Universe”) as Ben Campbell, an earnest and somewhat bookish — yet still raggedly hip — MIT student who is inches away from nailing a scholarship that will grant him a full-ride into Harvard Law. In his spare time, he develops a self-propelled automobile with his nerdy engineering friends and gawks at resident hottie Jill Taylor (Kate Bosworth). One of his professors, Mickey Rosa (Kevin Spacey), sees great promise in Ben and attempts to recruit him to join an elite group of students whom Rosa is teaching to count cards in Blackjack. Rosa plans on using the students to rake it in in Vegas, but Ben’s better judgement says, “No.” When the possibility of being denied the scholarship weighs on him and when he sees that one of Rosa’s “elite” happens to be Jill, Ben is soon convinced and they’re off.

Meanwhile, we get to know Cole Williams (Laurence Fishburne), a tough loss prevention officer who has a bone to pick with Rosa and anyone whom he happens to catch trying to beat the system.

Any guesses as to who might be his next target?

The film had a lot of potential. It was based on the book Bringing Down The House written by Ben Mezrich. Although I haven’t read the book, a friend with whom I attended the film had and told me the true fate of the real Ben Campbell. If the filmmakers had shown a little more gumption, it could have made a truly compelling story. The real Ben wallowed in frustration for years and suffered a more crippling and desperate fate than the one shown here.