The Best Blackjack Movies of All Times

Hi there and welcome to our best blackjack movies review where you will find our top 10 blackjack movies that we carefully handpicked and examine for you. For your convenience, we decided to place some additional information and the movie trailers, so you can get familiar with all small details without even watching the films. He has a long way to go, so let’s don’t waste more time and get this party started.

The Top 10 Blackjack Movies – To Watch These Is a Must!

Before we step into a detailed examination of each blackjack movie separately, we decided that it will be a good idea if we show you the whole top 10 blackjack movies in a list. Some of them are classical 80s movies, and their quality is not that good, so watching them could be a bit difficult, but after all, it’s worth it.

Others, on the other side, are made after the large technical development that happened after the millennium, which guarantees you top video quality and high-resolution optionality. We bet that you don’t know all the blackjack movies that we have listed and it is time to find out. And if you are in a search of a place to play at, we can show you which is the best roulette casino that you can enjoy online while, maybe, watching one of the amazing movies below:

1. 21 (2008) – Young & Clever

21 is a thrilling drama crime movie based on the true story of a young and very gifted student who cannot afford his scholarship. Ben Campbell is an MIT student who is accepted into the most prestige Harvard Medical School, but the place is totally out of his budget or with other words, there is a $300,000 tuition fee. He has incredible skills in math, and because of that, he is asked by his MIT professor Micky Rosa to join his secret blackjack team.

It appears that the professor is collecting bright minds and teaching them how to count cards so they can win as much as possible on blackjack games in Las Vegas. In the beginning, everything was like a dream for Ben, because they successfully applied the card-counting and another cover signalling tricks which increased their winning probability and made them rich in no time. With the money came the new lifestyle together with the troubles. At the end of the movie, everything falls apart, but you need to see the finale with your own eyes. Still, you can check the trailer underneath:

2. Swingers (1996) – You Won’t Recognise The Young Vince Vaughn

The movie is a fiction, but it presents the typical life of unemployed actors in Hollywood in the 90’s when it was the revival of the swing dances. The main actors are names that nowadays are considered cinema legends. The movie revolves around the struggles of Mike Peters, who is one of the many people that came in Los Angeles to seek their fortune. Yes, but Mike’s girl leaves him heartbroken and this is where the help of a friend comes in. His best buddy Trent offers him a trip to Las Vegas, and of course, Mike agrees.

The sin city offers many temptations for the two young gentlemen who desperately seek for some fun. They play blackjack, drink booze and meet girls, but again nothing goes as expected. When they go back to Hollywood Mike spontaneously fall in love with a new girl, and we have a happy ending.

3. Rainman (1988) – Intelligence Means Everything!

This movie is one of the best blackjack movies of its decade where Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman are playing two entirely different by nature brothers. A film which end revolves around blackjack. The main character is the young Tom Cruise in the role of Charlie Babbitt, who is importing Lamborghinis in the USA and re-selling them to the local millionaires. After the death of his father, many things changed for Chalie. It was shocking for him to find out that he has a brother with mental illness who inherits $3 million from their father while Charlie gets one old Buick Roadmaster.

Raymon is an autist who has his own routines and being around him is not always easy. In the middle of his personal mess, the professional life of Charlie was also not going quite well. The Lamborghini that he was supposed to import is now not answering the emissions regulations. This made the creditor pull his money off and leave Charlie with an $80,000 dept. This was the moment he decided to go to Las Vegas but this time with his brother who can count cards better than anyone thanks to his mental state. Yes, they made $86,000+, which was enough to cover the dept and return to Los Angeles. At the end of the movie, the doctor from the mental facility offers Charlie $250,000 to leave Raymond, but probably you guessed that this is now the movie ends, right?

4. Croupier (1998) – Some Must Be Broken

Number four in our top 10 blackjack movies list takes Clive Owen in the role of Jack Manfred, a young writer with no promising carrier in the movie Croupier. With the help of his dad, who is a small-time hustler, he starts a job in a casino as a croupier. Shortly after, Jack made quite a mess. The Casino has specific policies that Jack decided to break, and he suffers the consequences of them. First, he slept with one of his colleagues Bella, which is forbidden by the casino, and which played a fatal role in his relationship with his girlfriend, Marion. Meanwhile, he got himself in another trouble at work because he breaks another casino rule – not to befriend with players.

Jani was playing nice, but her real intention was not that noble. She successfully persuaded him to participate in a casino robbery where his job was to raise the alarm when a particular player on his table is cheating. Marion found out he is involved in something criminal, and she paid the price for that. In the evening after the robbery, the police came to Jack to let him know that Marion was hit and killed by a car. The finale you should see on your own.

5. The Last Casino (2004) – All About Blackjack

This is another classical blackjack movie which could also be considered one of the best blackjack movies of all times. It was made in Canada, and it also has its French name “La Mise Finale”. The movie is about the math professor Doug Barnes using card counting to beat the casino house. But the casino manager Wilson takes a photo of Barnes’s face and blacklists him from the casino. Right after, he meets Orr, who came to find out how he will repay the money he lost. Then the professor suggests to create a team of students and teach them how to count cards. After a short research, he had his three candidates George, Scott and Elyse, all with an incredible memory.

Orr was persuaded to invest and support the team of new blackjack players and take 75% of the 50% cut that goes for professor Barnes. Everything was going great but with the money comes the new lifestyle and that is what precisely the movie shows. Not long after the first accusations that they are card counters were now are fact, and then Orr decides to pull off his support and tell Barnes that he has one week to repay his debt of $100,000. Barnes, on the other side, tells his team of students that they need to collect $500,000. They split and go in Ottawa and Quebec with the hope that the casinos there still don’t know their faces. Yes, but things didn’t go so well, because Scott and George were detained and led to the casino backroom for a quick chat. After all, in the end, they collected the money but also ensured that Orr would be on their meeting with Barnes just to be sure that the debt will be fully paid.

6. The Gambler (2014) – Gamble Your Way Out

One massive blackjack movie production of the last decade with Mark Wahlberg in the leading role. The film was not much appreciated by the public, but if you are a gambler, you will enjoy it. The movie tells the story of Jim Bennet, one very self-destructive literature professor who end up owing over $200,000 to the local underground gambling. This is far from everything, he owes another $50,000 to a loaner named Neville Baraka. But how he ends up this way, you will now find out. Jim is a good professor with bad habits. Amy, one of his students, works as a waitress in the previously mentioned local underground gambling circle. She keeps the secret of the professor but also shows him interest which he disregards.

Jim makes a desperate move by asking his rich mother to give him money after unsuccessfully tried to negotiate another loan with 3rd local loaner. After all, she gives him the money, but the gambler… is a gambler… Instead of paying his debts, he gables them too. Baraka kidnapped him and tortured him, then offered him a deal. A deal in which he must persuade his student Lamar to win a basketball college game by a margin of 7 points or less. Then Jim goes to Frank, asking for $260,000 to pay his debt to Lee but also tells him that all of his loved ones are in danger if Jim does not follow his rules. Them Jim goes to Lee asking him to stake him $150,000, pointing that this is the only way to repay both Lee and Frank. Surprisingly, Jim used the money to bribe Lamar, while he sent another student of his to bet on the game in Las Vegas with the rest $260,000. Lamar succeeds, and Jim successfully pays all of his debts to both Frank and Lee.

7. The Cooler (2003) – A Romantic Casino Story

This is the only romantic drama in our top 10 blackjack movies where the film revolves around love. The main character is Barnie Lootz, also known as Unlucky Barnie, who works as a cooler at the Shangri-la Casino. You may wonder what a cooler is? Well, this is a “bad luck” person whose job is to make people lose money. The story behind his job is that years ago he was a gambling addict and Shally, the casino manager, saves his life by breaking his knee and taking him at a cooler for six years to pay his debt. After Barnie defends one of the waitresses, Natalie, from an aggressive customer, she shows interest and starts dating him. This is how the love story begins.

Thanks to his passion and love he feels like the bed luck aura is gone and tells Natalie the truth why he is working at the casino and that soon he will be free to leave. Yes, but it appeared that Natalie was hired to make him stay, but she falls in love with him. Shelly disagrees with their feelings, and he tells Natalie to leave town which brings down Barnie, and he is again doing well as a cooler. Natalie’s feelings are real, and she comes back for Barnie, but while she is packing their luggage, Shelly goes into their motel room. He beats and cuts Natalie’s face. At the end Barnie confronts Shelly, but because the end of the story is very intense and tragic we won’t spoil more of it.

8. Jinxed! (1982) – Do You Believe in Bad Luck?

This blackjack movie will show you how crazy people can get in casinos and how superstitious they are. Jinxed is a real comedy about gambling where Bette Midler plays the leading role in the movie. Her character is called Bonita Friml, and she is a Las Vegas lounge singer married to a gambler named Harold Benson. The whole film revolves around Harold’s luck in blackjack and the secret love life of his wife Bonita. Harold plays in one particular casino, and he always wins against one croupier called Willie Brodax. Even Willie himself is not able to explain how come Harold always win on blackjack when he is on duty.

In a matter of facts, he was even fired from that casino. Then he moved to Reno to seek a new beginning. Yes, but Harold followed him because he considered him his lucky charm. Meanwhile, Bonita and Willie fall in love and even contemplate how to kill Harold in order to break the jinx and continue with their lives. Yes, but fate is a funny thing, while Harold was taking a shower, he decided to stick his finger into the light bulb socket and electrocute himself to death. Bonita and Willie panicked when they found him at first, but later on, they reminded themselves that Bonita wouldn’t take any money from his life insurance if the death is considered a suicide. So they put Harold behind the wheel of his truck and set up his crash incident. Yes, but there was no money, after all! The movie ends in the casino where Bonita sits on Willie’s table and wins a tonne of money on blackjack. Willies gets fired again, and they leave the town together. This is one of kind comedy and one of the best blackjack movies.

9. Casino (1995) – Old-School Las Vegas Mafia Movie

Casino 1995 is a movie based on the life of the famous Frank Rosenthal who ran the most famous casinos in Las Vegas during the ’70s. Robert De Niro in the leading role of Sam “the Ace” Rothstein who was trusted by the Chicago mobsters to take good care of their casino business in Las Vegas. There he meets the love of his life, Ginger. His best friend from Chicago Nicky Santoro was trusted by the mafia to keep Sam out of trouble and take care of the Las Vegas underground.

In the beginning, everything was great. Sam was doing fine with the casino while his beloved Ginger took good care of the crew. Nicky, well Nicky was doing what he knows best, beat the crab out of people. Sam was a professional in his job as a casino manager, but he had several confrontations with the local authorities because he fired the wrong man. He fired the brother in law of a Clark Country Commission chairman, which cost him his casino licence and where the drama began.

At the end of the movie, you see the classical scenario of betrayal where his best friend and his girlfriend stabbed him in the back. Later on, Nicky got killed by the Chicago Mafia, while Ginger died from an overdose in a hotels room. Sam and his daughter started a new life in San Diego.

10. Blackjack (1978) – Casino Robbery!

Blackjack 1978 is an old cinema movie where you can still see and feel black people discrimination. Well, the story is not much different from the real-life, indeed, but the film is not based on a true story. The plot is about a black prisoner who contemplates to rob 5 of the biggest casinos in Las Vegas, of course with the help of his friends and the local police. Because it is a classical movie we won’t spoil anymore, you need to watch it!

Blackjack Movies on Netflix

Netflix nowadays offers one of the most extensive online cinema services where you can find all types of serials and films. There are no specific blackjack movies on Netflix that we can point to, but of course, we can show you some of the top 3 gambling movies on Netflix that you can find there.

James Bond Casino Royale (2006)

James Bond has many series, but the one related to gambling is the Casino Royale where he must win a game of poker to complete his mission as a secret agent. As from every James Bond movie, you should expect nothing less than real action. Of course, at the back-story, the agent 007 meets a beautiful lady that must be saved from the bad guys, so typical for James Bond, right?

Bugsy (1991)

Based on the book “We Kill Each Other” the crime drama about the famous Bugsy Seagal. The movie tells the story of the gangster that controlled all betting and gambling in Las Vegas during the old-time mafia decades. His dreams made the city of Las Vegas what it is nowadays, but unfortunately, he was killed in 1947 before he was able to see what a paradise the city will become.

Ocean Trilogy (2001-2007)

The Ocean’s trilogy does not need any special introduction because usually, people do know about it. This is one of the tremendous casino/gambling trilogies that you can enjoy watching. Nothing is missing from expensive cars to awesome stunts, beautiful ladies and many emotions. One thing is a guarantee with the Ocean’s trilogy. It will keep you excited the whole time of the movies.

FAQ

Suppose you were not able to soak up everything in one go, no worries! We have gathered the most common questions asked about best blackjack movies for your convenience, so you can easily find their answers. In case you want to know more about the film in question, you should hit the jump button and land on the right section of our article.

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