Stolen Moments

In Ocean’s Eleven, the good bits keep coming, but they don’t fit together.

by Sam Adams

Ocean’s Eleven

Directed by Steven Soderbergh
A Warner Bros. Release



Heist Complex: Danny Ocean (George Clooney) lays out the job.

How far will cool get you? About as far as Ocean’s Eleven goes. Steven Soderbergh, who reinvigorated the crime-film genre — and, not incidentally, his career — with Out of Sight in 1998, takes another whack at it with this loose remake of the 1959 Rat Pack caper flick. Of course, in the intervening three years, Soderbergh’s gone from being a scrappy, clever director with limited commercial prospects to, post-Traffic, post-Erin Brockovich, being able to do more or less whatever he wants. Ocean’s Eleven isn’t a gaudy movie — as with Traffic, Soderbergh shot the film himself (though he’s again pseudonymously credited as "Peter Andrews") and he replaces the standard high-gloss look of most heist movies with a grainy, dynamic feel that brings every shot alive — but it’s a lazy one.

A few minutes in, the suave Danny Ocean (George Clooney), fresh out of prison, meets up with his old partner in crime Rusty (Brad Pitt), and before they’ve finished their drinks, Rusty’s on to what Danny’s got cooking: "You just got out — you got a plan already?" Danny gives him a noncommittal answer, then shoots him one of those famous Clooney grins. And that grin is the whole movie. With more than a dozen characters — 11 heisters, plus oily casino boss Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia) and Tess (Julia Roberts), Danny’s ex-wife and Terry’s current squeeze — to keep track of, plus the machinery of the most complicated robbery ever conceived (or something like that), Ocean’s Eleven can do no more than coast on charisma, both the actors’ and the movie’s.

Clooney’s probably never been called on to play the movie star quite as much as he is here, and even if you’re wise to his tricks, you have to admit he pulls it off. Unfortunately, the rest of the 11 have less to work with, and do less with it. Even sharp-tongued actors like Don Cheadle and Carl Reiner wind up on the short end of the hot potato. (It doesn’t help that Cheadle’s so determined to play against type that he’s cast as a Cockney safecracker with a not-even-slightly convincing accent.) Even Pitt, a limited actor who can nonetheless light up the screen when he gets to play the wildman, is straitjacketed by a part that essentially requires him to be Clooney’s twin. When they swap banter, as they too often do, it’s Clooney’s rhythms that dominate the scene; Pitt just seems like he’s along for the ride. Whatever Pitt’s strengths as an actor, snappy patter isn’t one of them. When he arrives at what should be a showcase line, a slang-laden list of the personnel they’ll need for the upcoming heist — "A Boesky, a Jim Brown, a Miss Daisy, two Jethros, a Leon Spinx, not to mention the biggest Ella Fitzgerald ever " — the words come out flat, like a laundry list. What for Clooney plays like unruffled cool, in Pitt’s hands comes off as mere laziness.

You can’t really blame Pitt for trying to coast on charm, though, since Ocean’s Eleven really has nothing nobler in mind. Ted Griffin’s screenplay has attitude but not much snap. (Any movie with pretensions to hipness should know how stale a line like "Ted Nugent called: He wants his shirt back" is.) The details of the heist — a plan to rob three casinos simultaneously, on a fight night, with a take of more than $160 million — are left mercifully vague, but that just makes it more disappointing that the characters never evolve beyond tics. There’s no reason why a large-cast movie can’t be home to several sharp performances, but only Elliot Gould’s sartorially egregious rival casino boss and Bernie Mac’s felonious cardsharp make any kind of impression, and in Mac’s case, it has far less to do with his character and more to do with his own stand-up-honed persona.

It’s hard to find a moment in Ocean’s Eleven that isn’t enjoyable, but it’s just as hard to enjoy the whole thing. The magic of Out of Sight is nowhere to be found, despite the return engagement by composer David Holmes, who cooks up a similarly simmering stew of burbling organ funk and cocktail exotica. It doesn’t seem fair or even sensible to criticize a movie like Ocean’s Eleven for not providing more substance, but even a cake needs more than frosting.