03.29.08
Editorial Review: “21″, submitted by John Yao
Most movie reviews focus in on the how great the special effects were in the film or how great the acting. My review will not focus in on those two topics but on the basic facts to which the film “21″ is based on.
Hollywood has always exploited minorities.
From the first gigantic money making blockbuster D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation where African American stereotypes were exploited to make money by white film makers.
To the casting of John Wayne as Genghis Khan, Omar Shariff again in the remake of Genghis Khan, Anthony Quinn as a Filipino freedom fighter, Yul Brynner as the King of Thailand, Ben Kingsley as Mohandas K. Gandhi.
My point is simply this:
The main characters in
the film: Ken Lewis, Ben Campbel, and Mikey Rosa are based of the following Asian Men: Jeff Kevin Ma, Mike Aponte, and John Chang.
According to the real Jill Lewis the character portrayed in the movie by Kate Bosworth in the Boston Globe has admitted that Jeff Ma was one of the MIT Black Jack Team Leaders and that Jeff Ma recruited her into the team.
Ms Lewis has also stated the following:
“”Jeff would occasionally have an expensive bottle of wine or champagne, and it didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Then he told us about Vegas,” Willis says. “I think it dawned on him that we could play blackjack and also give the team, which was mostly Asian”
Here is the link to the Boston Globe: http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2008/03/25/count_her_out/?page=full
John Chang has stated on his website that he is the inspiration for the Mikey Rosa character on the film.
Here is his link:
http://mickeyrosa.com/
My name is John Chang. I am the basis for Ben Mezrich’s characters Mickey Rosa (from Bringing Down the House) and Victor Cassius (from Busting Vegas). Kevin Spacey plays Mickey Rosa in the 21 movie, premiering March 28, 2008.
The worst thing that happened is what Jeff Ma said in USA Today
“I would have been a lot more insulted if they had chosen someone who was Japanese or Korean, just to have an Asian playing me,’ Ma says.”
Here’s the link:
http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2008-03-25-jeff-ma-21_N.htm
“21″ could have been the perfect project for an up and coming Asian American actor such as: Roger Fan or Parry Shen or Sung Kang or Will Yun Lee. “21″ could have been used to shatter the glass ceiling that most Asian American actors face on daily when they go on auditions. Constantly for male Asian American actors are type casted as either the Kung Fu / Zen Master or Geeky tech guy or even worst as a part of the evil nameless and faceless mass throngs who are to be mowed down by machine gun fire by the likes of Sylvester Stallones’ Rambo. “21″ could have been used to portray Asian Americans as simply as people just trying to make American dream come true.
To quote a fellow member on facebook’s “Boycott 21″ who so eloquently put it:
“It doesn’t matter that this movie isn’t supposed to be entirely true-to-life. It still doesn’t excuse the fact that its casting still reflects the outdated notion that Americans mainly identify with white protagonists. This movie was a great opportunity for Hollywood to buck that trend, but ultimately it failed.”
This is why I am not seeing “21″ and I urge others to tell the truth about “21″
- John Yao