The Greatest Films of the Noughties, #9: Ocean's Eleven

Directed by Steven Soderbergh; written by Ted Griffin, based on a screenplay by Harry Brown and Charles Lederer; cinematography by Steven Soderbergh
116 mins.; 2.35:1; colour; language: English
At Wikipedia, IMDb (7.6), Metacritic (74)


As suggested by the distribution of Metacritic and IMDb scores, there seems to be some general agreement that this is a good-but-not-great movie, nothing but director Steve Soderbergh clearing his throat before producing another one of his Great Masterpieces of American Cinema. Fuck it, I say. Give me this over Solaris or The Good German any day.

The setup is simple enough: Just out of prison, Daniel Ocean (Clooney) seeks out his old chum Rusty Ryan (Pitt) to suggest they rob what is repeatedly described as the world's safest vault, one holding cash for three Las Vegas casinos. As coincidences go, they are owned by the man who is now with Ocean's ex-wife Tess (Roberts), Terry Benedict (Garcia) - the latter exhibiting a hefty dose of arrogance and the mediterranean looks that pale Englishmen, distgust written all over their faces, sometimes describe as "Italian waiter". ("He is good-looking in a gloriously smarmy, Italian-waiter fashion," wrote a Times journalist when trying to explain why he and fellow English football fans dislike Cristiano Ronaldo.)

And so the fun begins. The film goes through all the standard elements of heist movies, driven forward by a tight screenplay and a score that is truly in the service of the picture (David Holmes). It also capitalizes on the screeen presences and comedy talents of the leading men Clooney and Pitt, with the likes of Matt Damon and Don Cheadle serving as glorified extras. At times it comes across as a toned-down screwball comedy: Roger Ebert recalls "the conversation involving Clooney, Roberts and Garcia, when the casino boss finds the ex-husband at Tess' table in the dining room. The two men of course despise one another, but are so smooth and cool we note it only in the precision of their timing and word choices, leading up to a final exchange in which Danny, leaving the table, says 'Terry' in a way that uses the first name with inappropriate familiarity, and Terry responds 'Danny' on precisely the same note." But the film's most prominent feature is certainly its lushness, almost every frame packed with bling, blong and blang. You can see Ocean's Eleven as a kind of anti-Reservoir Dogs, and the two would make a great double feature.

The film really made me appreciate the arts of screenwriting and directing. Director-cinematographer Soderbergh composes every frame meticulously, and the screenplay by Ted Griffin suggests to the first-time viewer she knows exactly what is going on, only to reveal at the end that she's been led astray - and I'm not talking about someone waking up and realizing it was only a dream.

It's easy enough to miss that when you see it for the first time. It's just too much fun.

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