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Ocean’s 12 Dir. Steven Soderbergh, 2005 This, much as it pains me to write it, is a real insult. On a par with being dumped by your long-term girlfriend, or watching an impudent child bursting all of your birthday party balloons. For the most part, Ocean’s 12 is a colossal waste of time, money and talent for everyone involved, for the cast larking it up onscreen and the audience watching uncomfortably. I should add prefix this by saying that I am a huge fan of the first movie, Ocean’s 11 (not the Rat Pack debacle (1960), but the Steven Soderbergh remake). Whereas the original is witty, charming and self-deprecating, this sequel is vain, smug and self-congratulatory. By the end, and I am surprised that I endured it until then, I felt as if I had been hoodwinked by a card shark, and not a particularly good one. Ocean’s 11_ is not perfect by any means, but it is hugely entertaining. Bristling with likeable characters and witty dialogue, it lulled the viewer into a fantastical though colourful Las Vegas world, where men in sharp, expensive suits can pull off a highly improbably scam, and walk away with the loot, the girl, and all of their limbs intact. Kind of like David Mamet with less swearing and more love for humanity. Ocean’s 11 remains a distinctly un-Hollywood picture, a dry-humored and good-natured movie that subverts the genre at every turn. It rewards with repeated viewings, as to try to unscramble how exactly Danny Ocean (George Clooney, who is perfect for the role) and his gang of tricksters managed to pull a fast one on Vegas kingpin Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia). You realize just how often you have been conned, but it’s a good feeling, not one where you demand your money back. Ocean’s 12 opens with establishing shots explaining how each of the original eleven have been spending their time and their ill-gotten gains since the heist. Soderbergh’s opening montage is impressive, and is punctuated by his traditional flashy camerawork. Danny is enjoying the comforts of normality with Benedict’s old girlfriend Tess (Julia Roberts), but itches to do “one more job”. Rusty (Brad Pitt, as handsome as ever) has sunk his wealth into a foolhardy hotel venture. This new life is ruined when Benedict visits each of the gang in turn, demanding that they return the $160 million that they stole from him within two weeks, or face the consequences. The crooks regroup to plan a string of elaborate scams, but their problems are aggravated by the presence two new characters: a savvy Europol detective (Catherine Zeta-Jones) is in hot pursuit and just happens to be Rusty’s ex-lover, and infamous French cat burglar “The Night Fox,” who has an annoying habit of knocking off every hit on Ocean’s list minutes before he and his buddies arrive at the scene. It is at this point that Ocean’s 12 begins to flounder. After a neat setup that promises numerous intriguing plot directions, the film strains under the weight of too many characters and too many dodges. Ocean’s 11 built towards one convoluted casino heist, but the sequel revolves around multiple, even more complex scams that do not make much sense from either a logical perspective or an overexaggerated cinematic one. The episodic nature narrative defuses any possibility for tension, and the final pay-off is so lackadaisical that there is no sense of wonder or admiration. The viewer doesn’t feel the same ooh, that’s clever tingle as before. Worse, the script is peppered liberally with knowing in-jokes that are more distracting than amusing. At one point, Rusty teases Topher Grace (playing himself) for “phoning in” a performance for a movie with Dennis Quaid, referring to the recently released romantic comedy _In Good Company_. The final heist hangs on a conceit that is so lame and self-congratulatory that I begged it not to happen when it was signposted early on in the film. Academics would call it “metatheatre”, and the idea may have seemed like a real gas when Soderbergh, Clooney et al were putting the film together, but it just seems like a rather desperate attempt to gain laughs. I expected great things from Ocean’s 12. I am a fan of both the director and the cast, most of whom (especially Don Cheadle and Matt Damon) are given little to work with here, and their discomfort shows. I guess the best way of explaining it is that in _Ocean’s 11_ you felt as if you were part of the team, along for the ride with a gang of clumsy but effortlessly cool players who always come out on top in spite of the odds. In Ocean’s 12, however, you are outside of the circle. It is not a nice place to be. Ross Thompson
4/3/2005
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