The Sting with a dodgy script (Ocean's Eleven (DVD))

Member Name: andrewl

Product:	Ocean's Eleven (DVD)
Date:	04/08/09 (49 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cool

Disadvantages: But stupid

Ocean's 11 was a film that was guaranteed to make big money. With the plethora of A-list stars, each film magazine could have a different one on the cover. With more than enough star interviews and Sinatra retrospectives to go round, magazine editors could feel they were under less pressure to compete, and everyone was a winner.

Except for the average film-goer that is.

It's not that Ocean's 11 is a bad film. It's just that once you get past Clooney, Pitt and Damon sharing the screen, the actual story at its publicity-seeking heart is desperately ordinary. We see a group of scammers breaking into a Mission: Impossible vault requiring Entrapment-style dexterity and precision in order to ruin an unpleasant businessman and win back his girlfriend (Danny Ocean's former wife, the ever-perplexing Julia Roberts). And there's a final twist to the robbery that's straight from The Sting.

Add to this yet another cinematic explanation of an Electro-Magnetic Pulse effect (EMP) (seriously, we UNDERSTAND now. We saw Goldeneye), that bloke from Swordfish with a dodgy Cockney accent and countless cameos from grubbing little teen movie non-entities in an achingly unfunny poker lesson, and you have a film that is so studied in the art of appearing cool that you could dump it in the Arctic and call it polar bear poo. But on a second viewing, when you actually watch it instead of drooling over whoever your favourite star happens to be, the hackneyed plot and the terribly busy script start to appear very thin indeed.

To recap the story in as unsarcastic a manner as possible: Danny Ocean is let out of prison on parole, whereupon he contacts all his old buddies for 'one last job', a convoluted plan to rob several casinos of over one hundred million dollars. The owner of the casinos happens to be his estranged wife. Can you guess what happens? Thought so.

There is much that is unintentionally hilarious about the film. I enjoyed reading the cast interviews where Andy Garcia kept talking about how he didn't mind taking a pay cut to appear in a Soderbergh movie and you can't help but wonder how much he usually expects to get paid seeing as he hadn't been anywhere near a major film since The Untouchables.

Despite all the characters worshipping her, Julia Roberts is looking decidedly other than her best for most of the film as well. When Matt Damon's character refers to her regular appearance as 'the highlight of his day', it even gets a little tragic. I don't know how old Roberts is, but Damon looks about eighteen in this film and it's a little bit creepy to be honest with you.

The plot is tragically flawed. Certain things happen which make no sense other than providing a pointless twist for the audience. Brad Pitt excluding Ocean from the final heist, for example, or the elderly trickster's apparent medical condition.

The visual style is occasionally interesting, although the heavy use of voiceovers soon becomes a little tiring, especially for those of us who've seen Guy Ritchie's films. The camerawork is all fairly fresh and flashy, but it can't disguise the basic lack of imagination behind what it's describing.

Sooner or later, I suppose I have to include a performance roll call. Well, George Clooney is, to be fair, on fine form. He's charming and warm, the perfect con man, and he has an easy screen relationship with Brad Pitt, who's also doing some good work. Julia Roberts is woefully pointless, and is treated throughout as a kind of trophy. Which makes it all the stranger that she didn't bother doing her hair. The inclusion of Matt Damon is the straw that finally breaks the camel's back in terms of the dusting of star names. His character adds very little to the proceedings except the occasional bit of drama when he does something wrong. Andy Garcia seems to be taking things a lot more seriously than anyone else, creating a smoothly evil tycoon who utterly deserves to be robbed. But, as I've pointed out, Garcia is the one with the most to gain from a decent performance.

Everyone else varies. The bickering brothers are deeply irritating, but the retired man and the nervous engineer characters are great.

If I had to classify this film, I'd say it was quite a lot like the Blues Brothers without the songs. Much of the film is spent recruiting 'Ocean's Eleven' on a Mission From God, and then they do a big band number at the end for the actual job. The film's outcome is never really in question, and it's even possible to predict quite a few of the twists. In the interests of fair play, I shan't reveal any of them here, however.

Which means I'm rapidly running out of things to talk about. But that's the problem with this film. It's the most blatant display of style over substance that I've seen for some time. The actors are cool, the camerawork is cool, the way in which the heist is carried out has been done before but is still cool. Beyond the cool, however, it's just very uninteresting. You'll probably enjoy it the first time you watch it, but it loses its appeal on repeat viewings extremely quickly.

There are of course inevitable sequels, which are even more back-slappy and self-indulgent, but I've not heard of a new one for a while, so hopefully they've given up on the series. The DVD is generally available for around the £7 mark if you look online, and you can also get it in boxsets with the other films.

Summary: If you really want to see a star-studded film about professional con artists, watch The Sting.