21 | Boston Chinatown — The Back-Room Table Before Vegas

Before anyone boards a plane, Ben has to prove the system on a real table with real money, and he goes looking for one a few blocks from campus. The film sends him through Boston's Chinatown — Tyler Street, then a narrow alley off Beach Street — to a door that does not advertise itself.

The neighborhood delivers that atmosphere without any set dressing. Boston's Chinatown is the third largest in the country and the only surviving one in New England, packed into a few dense blocks between the Theater District and the old Leather District. The paifang at Beach Street and Surface Road, a gift from Taiwan installed in 1982, marks the entrance with two stone foo lions and a green tiled roof. Behind it the streets narrow fast: restaurant vents, bakery windows, delivery crates, fire escapes stacked four high, and doorways that could lead to an apartment or to a room with a table in it.

Walk Beach Street after dark, when the kitchens are running and steam is coming off the grates. The film did not need to invent a place where a college kid could quietly find out what he is capable of. It just had to point a camera down the right alley.