Overall Rating
  Awesome: 6.82%
Worth A Look: 15.15%
Average: 34.09%
Pretty Bad: 34.09%
Total Crap: 9.85%
12 reviews, 60 user ratings
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| Ocean's Twelve |
by MP Bartley
"Twelve is just too crowded."
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No-one can deny that Soderbergh's 'Ocean's 11' update was one of the most sheerly enjoyable remakes there's probably ever been. For the audience it was the joy of seeing a tightly wound heist bound up with a witty script, topped off with a director working at the top of his game and polished by an impossibly glitzy and good looking cast. It was terrific entertainment, and by all accounts was a ball for the cast to make. So much so, that all eleven were more than happy to reunite for the sequel to keep the party going. Unfortunately that should never be a reason for making a film, and the end result is sadly more like the Sinatra original than the Soderbergh reimagining.Danny (George Clooney), Rusty (Brad Pitt), Linus (Matt Damon) and the rest of the eleven are reunited when angry casino boss Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia) manages to track them down. He wants his money back that they stole from him - but with interest - or they all die. Dannys plan is to hit Europe for riches, but this is complicated by an old flame of Rusty's, Isabelle (Catherine Zeta-Jones), who turns up with a vendetta against Rusty for running out on her. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, particularly when she works for Interpol. Furthermore, Danny is tricked into competing against the infamous Nightfox (Vincent Cassell), a thief who views Europe as his playground, and wants Danny out.
So you have three intertwining sub-plots, that shouldn't be a problem in the safe hands of Soderbergh and his famously tight control of multi-narrative stories. Unfortunately, Soderbergh seems to have taken a snooze and just let Clooney and company run riot in front of the cameras. It's a terribly unbalanced film, with no real focus or centre to the film. The Rusty and Isabelle aspect flies by with no real chemistry or interest from either actor, and most of the eleven are side-lined with no real impact on events whatosever, other than just hanging around behind Brad Pitt or George Clooney. Pity poor Bernie Mac, whose sole input to the plot is to be imprisoned. Whereas in the first film, all the eleven were a vital cog in the machine, here they're back to have a good time and nothing else. I honestly can't remember a single line of dialogue that Elliot Gould, Carl Reiner or Scott Caan had, to name just three.
Instead, a prevailing sense of smugness courses throughout the film, as if we should be entertained just by the mere presence of Pitt and Clooney showing up again. Every scene seems to come equipped with a smirk from everyone about how much fun they're having, whilst in-jokes amongst the cast are obviously bubbling beneath the surface. Unfortunately, none of this transmits to the audience, who are more likely to be getting frustrated waiting for the plot to kick in. There's no sense of danger from Benedict or conflict with the Nightfox, in fact, there's precious little drama here at all
Look, I'm glad Clooney, Pitt, Roberts and everyone else are great friends, I really am. I'm glad they can all hang out at George's Italian villa and swap stories. It's nice to have friends. But this joshing around with friends never translates to wit or excitement. It's like last month, I went to Berlin with a group of friends, but I certainly wouldn't video everything and try to sell it as a comedy. One of our funniest conversations was about bananas, but no-one else would find it funny. Why? Because no-one else would understand the context of the conversation, or the history of the people involved. It's a flaw that 'Ocean's Twelve' fails to avoid, and its absolute nadir comes with the 'Julia Roberts IS Julia Roberts!' sequence. It's a huge in-joke that falls painfully flat on its face, belonging in more of a meta-comedy like 'The Player' than a crowd-pleasing heist thriller.
Clooney flits in and out of the picture, trying to survive on mere presence alone, while Pitts storyline fails to catch alight, leaving Matt Damon to try and manfully rescue the film. And all credit to him, he does his best, becoming the best thing in the film. Constantly baffled and bemused by the on-going's around him, he fully displays his subtle comic timing and seems to be the only one who remembers that the audience should have someone to root for.
And the heists themselves? What heists? Whereas the last 40 minutes of the previous film was spent beautifully detailing the plan and building up the tension, the two heists here are thrown in as an afterthought. The first is over in a blink of an eye, with the use of a terrible deus ex machina; whilst the second is a complete cheat, hiding twists and deliberately pulling away beliefs in a manner that isn't clever, but insulting. It's an approach that smacks off "aw, will this do for the plot? We want to keep on having fun!". Considering just how high Soderbergh and everybody had built their stakes, it's a terrible shame they blew their hand.Hopefully the upcoming 'Ocean's Thirteen' will be more than a home video of Brad Pitt flipping burgers in George Clooney's back yard, whilst George rubs suntan lotion into Julia Robert's shoulders.
link directly to this review at https://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=11326&reviewer=293
originally posted: 05/07/06 01:14:46
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USA
10-Dec-2004 (PG-13)
DVD: 12-Apr-2005
UK
N/A
Australia
09-Dec-2004
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