|
 |
|
Ocean's Eleven
***1/2
Cinema Releases - February 15, 2002
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 12. 116
minutes. Directed by Steven Soderbergh. Written by Ted Griffin; based on
the 1960 movie "Ocean's 11" -- screenplay by Harry Brown, Charles Lederer;
story by George Clayton Johnson, Jack Golden Russell. Starring George Clooney,
Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, Matt Damon, Andy Garcia, Carl Reiner, Elliot Gould,
Casey Affleck, Scott Caan, Don Cheadle, Bernie Mac, Shaobo Qin, Edward
Jemison.
"The house always wins. But when that perfect
hand comes along, you play -- and then you beat the
house."
"You've been practising that speech, haven't
you?"
Steven Soderbergh's "Ocean's Eleven"
is a caper movie oozing old-school style and peppered with cute little dashes
of contemporary self-consciousness. The dialogue snaps back and forth in
perfect rhythm, the look of the picture is slick, the costumes are snappy,
the soundtrack features groovy doses of swing and funk that bubble under
the surface like a sly, anticipant smirk. This is a film that feels plain
cool and makes us want to grin.
George Clooney plays Daniel Ocean, an armed robber
who just got out of federal prison and already has his next score lined up.
His beloved ex-wife, played by Julia Roberts, is now engaged to a slimy Las
Vegas businessman played by Andy Garcia, and Clooney reckons he'd get some
satisfaction from raiding the vaults of three of Garcia's
casinos.
These casinos have more security than most nuclear
missile silos, or so the dialogue tells us, and Clooney's high-tech preparation,
which includes renting a warehouse to build a scale mock-up of the giant
underground vaults, looks like it would cost a good percentage of the millions
he plans to steal. One of the key motions a heist picture has to go through
is a series of scenes involving detailed planning -- looking at blueprints,
chewing over problems, staking out locations. This is a ritual I always get
a kick out of, and here is it done with tremendous detail and
suavity.
Before the planning scenes, of course, are those
in which the mastermind assembles his team. There are eleven guys, as you
might have guessed from the title -- Clooney, as charismatic as he was in
"Out of Sight"; Brad Pitt, as dry as he's ever been; Elliot Gould, laid back,
seasoned, witty, playing off his status as an icon; Matt Damon, offbeat,
intense and sly; Don Cheadle, putting on the most amusingly awful Cockney
accent since Dick Van Dyke; Casey Affleck, riffing off Scott Caan with the
eccentric manner he honed so effectively in "Good Will Hunting"; and Carl
Reiner, Bernie Mac, Shaobo Qin and Edward Jemison in the
background.
These guys are not just wonderful actors, but
move around in a manner as harmonised and self-assured as that of the Rat
Pack. Indeed "Ocean's Eleven" is based on a Rat Pack picture from 1960, which
I can hardly remember but is generally thought of as flat and overlong.
Soderbergh's version should serve as an example of the real purpose of remakes
-- instead of inanely reworking the classics, filmmakers need to take the
strengths of failed movies that had potential and eliminate their
flaws.
"Ocean's Eleven" has a light, bouncy touch throughout;
the cast marches through the material with underlying wit, and I appreciated
such moments as when Clooney and Pitt have trouble getting a bomb trigger
working, and Pitt asks, "Did you check the batteries?" The snap of film noir
is present too, what with the insistently sleek aesthetics and the presence
of such sassy lines as, "I saw you before you even got up this morning."
Julia Roberts's screen time totals only a few minutes, but she feels like
a major player, slinking around with a charge that makes sure we do not forget
her. She also gets one of the movie's best lines -- Clooney tells her he
received the divorce papers the day he left prison, and Roberts responds,
"I told you I'd write."
Soderbergh is a great director, who has triumphed
with serious pictures like "Sex, Lies and Videotape", "The Limey" and "Traffic".
He is such an expert artist, with such an ability to command material, that
he can make pure entertainment like this with seeming ease and total charm.
I felt a tingle as "Ocean's Eleven" began, sensing I was about to see something
assured, and feeling eager to be engulfed by the ambience.
COPYRIGHT©
2002 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
2002 Reviews
(alphabetical)
2002 Reviews (by star
rating)
Archive of all cinema reviews
(alphabetical)
Review Archive
Index
UK
Critic main page
|
|
![[Image]](http://www.ukcritic.com/posbanr2.gif)