Hey folks, Harry here with a look at OCEAN'S ELEVEN by a theatre manager that walks around impersonating Academy Award winning directors to young girls at grocery stores... We do not know yet if this works in getting dates, laid or life long commitments, but we are pursuing this research immediately. Here's the review... I'm off to the grocery store with my Lord of the Rings crew jacket. Hehehehe...
Harry,
When you are a theatre manager, life is about the little joys. Like one customer coming out and complaining about the theatre being too cold, then five seconds later returning and saying it's too hot. Complaints about "ice cold" popcorn, noisy kids, and the audacity of not allowing someone's six year old to see Scary Movie 2 are the norm. It is, in fact, a little shocking the phrase is "going postal" and not "going theatre" a lot of the time.
But there are some actual joys, at times. For example, our company's Christmas party involved a screening of Ocean's 11. I know, probably no one has heard of this movie, but I hear the director has won some minor awards here and there and, though most of the cast is made up of no-names, one of them has a sitcom on Fox.
Anyway, in all seriousness, I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. Is this an Academy Award winning film? Well, maybe... but primarily because this has been something of a weak year for film, and the rep of Soderbergh might carry the movie. Still, the movie was enjoyable, and I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it(most of us weren't crazy about the choice of film, and were hoping, up until the WB logo played, that it was all a ruse, and Lord of the Rings would be shown). As a disclaimer, I've not seen the original version, and couldn't say how close it compares.
The film begins with Danny Ocean being paroled and, of course, immediately planning the heist that drives the film. The whole opening portion of the movie, in which Danny puts together the titular "Eleven", showcases one of the film's great strengths: The cast, for the most part, has great chemistry(I'll get to that later). Danny and Dusty(Brad Pitt) trade some witty barbs, but the kind that, without the proper chemistry between actors, would just sound like someone trying to be Tarentino and failing miserably. Clooney and Pitt work extremely well together, as well as with much of the rest of the cast.
Once assembled, Danny tells us how difficult it's going to be to break into the heavily secured casinos. Of course, all three of these casinos are owned by Harry Benedict, who naturally has a large private security force and the tendency to disregard the law when it comes to people trying to cross him. So, stakes are high, rewards are high, and now we get to see Danny's team put their plan in action. Of course, what caper movie wouldn't be complete without complications, and we get our fair share of those as well. The most notable is that Danny's ex-wife is, shall we say, "dating", Mr. Benedict. Everything else from their planned power outage running into a hitch to their "grease man" breaking his hand sets up the inevitable "complications" that are going to make things hard for the Eleven.
The clever thing is, however, that Soderbergh uses this device later to make you think things are going wrong, when in fact they are part of the plan. I won't say much on that account, since it would spoil several of the best elements of the heist itself, but it keeps the tension very high in the film's final third.
Okay, that's the plot in a nutshell. So, how does it come together? Well, it goes without saying, Soderbergh directs the film beautifully. This should be no surprise, though. The film has a great feel to it overall, and Soderbergh uses some nice camera tricks, but knows when to do them and to not overdo them(the example of the opposite is a really pointless 360 pan around two of the bad guys in Behind Enemy Lines... it only serves to make the audience dizzy, and to make theatre managers checking presentation to decide to watch the presentation of Harry Potter, instead).
As for the cast, they do nice work. As I said before, Clooney and Pitt work together well. Matt Damon has some really terrific moments in the movie, particularly when he poses as a member of the Nevada Gaming Commission. The other two stars... eh, well... I'm not a huge Julia Roberts fan, and I found myself wishing that she had been another one of the cast forced to bow out at some point. I was trying to figure out what bugged me about the movie, and it hit me as I wrote this... Julia Roberts's character is just kinda there. She's the angry ex-wife who hates her ex-husband and is dating a jerk who she thinks is wonderful. Yeah, some of the other characters in the movie aren't exactly free of cliches, but the other actors add nuance and personality to make their characters endearing in some way. Tess Ocean is just kinda... there. And she and Clooney do not exactly share a lot of chemistry, either. In playing Benedict, Andy Garcia has three gears. "Evil asshole", "pissed off evil asshole" and "smug evil asshole". I don't think it's Andy's fault, really... I think it's more an issue of the fact that Benedict can't have any redeemable or likable qualities. We HAVE to hate Benedict to validate cheering for the thiefs. So I guess, in a way, Garcia does just what he has to do.
The best part of the movie, however, is the rest of the supporting cast. Bernie Mac, best known as one of the Original Kings of Comedy, impressed me with a toned down performance. If you've seen Bernie, from his act to his TV show to previous film roles, such as Jangle Leg in Life, you know he's usually pretty intense. It's good to see he puts his on stage persona on the backburner to offer a solid performance. Of course, the Original Kings Bernie DOES show up in one scene, and it's remarkably entertaining. Carl Reiner is also great. I'm not familiar with a lot of his earlier work, but seeing him in the film makes me want to change that. Eddie Griffin is also fun to watch, and probably gets a good share of the film's memorable lines. I was half expecting his English accent to be a one note joke, dropped after he first showed up, but he manages to keep it for the whole movie. Scott Caan, Casey Affleck, Elliot Gould, Edward Jemison and Shaobo Qin are all fun to watch. Caan and Affleck got small cheers almost every time they showed up in a different costume, Gould's part is amusing, and for my money had one of the best bits in the whole movie, and Qin, who plays the group's "grease man", got some laughs when he inexplicably goes from quiet to foul mouth in the heist sequence.
All in all, I'd have to say the film is enjoyable, but only because the elements came together just right. Without the chemistry, the movie's banter would just seem like someone trying to be overly clever. Without Soderbergh, it could have just degenerated into a "Look! There are a lot of stars in this movie!" kind of disaster, even though Soderbergh does set up a few shots that almost seem to say, "Look! HERE'S Brad Pitt! HERE'S Matt Damon!" But he does it with enough style that you don't mind too much. All in all, a fun flick. Not an Academy Award winner(well, maybe, just on the strength of the names attached), and definately not the best film released this year, but a fun way to escape life for two hours... even if it DID have the awful, AWFUL Collateral Damage trailer in front of it.
And a funny postscript... after the movie, we stopped by a grocery to pick up a few things. I was wearing my suit and an Ocean's 11 cap generously donated to us managers(don't worry, it didn't effect the review... if it did, I'd have loved America's Sweethearts and the Bachelor, too). As I stood at the magazine rack, a young woman approached me and asked if I "had something to do with the movie". A chance like that doesn't come along every day.
"Hi, yes. My name is Steven Soderbergh, and it's my movie."
The worst part? She bought it, and actually asked me what it was like to work with Matt Damon. Ah well. We managers get our kicks where we can.
Call me...
Domon Kasshu
