"Ocean's Eleven" Rated PG-13
*****/*****
Ocean's Eleven, Steven Soderbergh's (Traffic) newest film is sheer fun. It is simply a heist a film. However, it is a very VERY smooth, stylish, and cool heist film. Steven Soderbergh (as he displayed in Traffic) is indeed a master of his craft, and it shows here. His use of sometimes symmetric, but also amazing camera shots, perfect setups, and use of color (like Traffic) combine to make this an almost perfectly shot film.
The direction isn't the only thing in this movie that's good. The story is itself is also good. As I stated before, this movie is pure entertainment. The dialogue is sharp, clever, and funny, and the ending is simply fantastic. This movie piles on the twists at the end, and still holds it together (unlike some movies such as Entrapment). Instead of having one good twist (like The Score, another great heist film this year), Ocean's Eleven has about 10 in the final few scenes. Yet somehow, its not overbearing.
George Clooney stars as Danny Ocean. A small time thieve just realized from jail. As soon as he's out, he plans to knock off three Las Vegas casinos at once. To pull it off, he'll need a crew of eleven people: himself, his long time partner and right hand man Rusty (Brad Pitt), a pickpocket (Matt Damon), a bomb expert (Don Cheadle), a retired con man (Carl Reiner), a financier (Elliot Gould), a blackjack dealer (Bernie Mac), a Chinese acrobat, mormon twins, and an electronic expert. Sounds like the most ragtag crew ever assembled? Well, it is. But all of them play a crucial role in pulling off the heist.
The three casinos are owned by Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia), and just to complicate matters further, he's going out with Danny's ex-wife, Tess (Julia Roberts). The heist itself is one of the most intricately planned and executed one I've ever seen on film. We are told just enough of the plan to know what's going on (somewhat), but we still want to stick around and see what happens next. The heist, by the way, is absolutely ludicrous. This would never be pulled off in real life. And that's just the point, it's just for fun.
