Movie Analysis "21"

Week 11 – Communication Project-Final

Movie Analysis “21”

Sheila Sturgeon

Rasmussen College

Movie Analysis “21”

The story of “21” is truly fascinating, especially the process of card-counting and how the students and the professor use this legal technique to game the Vegas system. However, the story was hard to follow in the beginning because a lot of jargon about card playing was introduced and the "system" the team follows is a bit complicated. There were two key communications elements that I spotted in this movie, jargon and facial expression, but I would like to mention one that I thought was very important in this movie that isn’t in our list of the non-verbal communication and that is body gesture . These elements were scattered throughout the entire movie and I feel teaches us that jargon and facial expressions/gestures are basic communication skills we all use in everyday life and in almost any situation.

The first element that I chose for this movie is jargon. The term jargon is the specialized language of a professional class. Jargon examples include the language of a computer hacker, the psychologist, and the advertiser. You could also include the gambler with those examples. (The Interpersonal Communication Book. Pg. 93). The first scene in which I heard jargon, in the movie, was in the darkened classroom where Micky was trying to convince Ben to join their group. They used the term “face card” which is generally used to describe a card that depicts a person. Cards depicting people were developed in Europe, possibly in the late 14th century. Europeans changed the cards to represent European royalty and attendants, thereby forming the original face cards, Jack, Queen and King. Using jargon in this scene convinced me that these college students knew the game of blackjack and where confident players of the game.

The second scene is when they were at a diner and Micky and the rest of the gang were explaining to Ben how it would work...