Ocean's
Twelve (*)
review by Jon
Waterman
Danny Ocean and his boys are at it again. Well, actually,
Terry Benedict is at it, forcing the old crew of eleven to
be at said “it.” You see, Terry wants all the money
that was stolen from his casinos back. He has been in contact
with a mastermind thief to track everyone down. If the money
isn’t repaid in full, with interest, Mr. Benedict is
going to the authorities. Well, the guys already spent the
majority of the cash on various things. So, how will they come
up with the tens of millions needed to square up the bill?
Why, by stealing of course. What else?
With “Ocean’s Eleven” I was in. This time,
count me out. For starters, once again it takes far too long
to get into anything. We spend a good half hour or more catching
up with everyone and reintroducing the characters. I could
honestly care less what they’ve been up to, or how they
spent the money. It didn’t mean anything to the storyline
or to the audience. So, by the time any sort of actual plot
line comes along, the interest in gone. Screenwriter George
Nolfi (who’s only previous work is the sure-to-be-classic, “Timeline”)
doesn’t get things moving any better once the heist starts
up. The first job they pull was too uncomplicated, and the
major one was complex beyond comprehension. All the twists
and turns couldn’t be predicted, but they also couldn’t
be believed (even for a movie that requires so much suspension
of reality as this). It makes this whole escapade rather lifeless.
The characters aren’t as fun as they were, either. A
big problem is the addition of the other thief, the Night Fox
(played by Vincent Cassel from “Irreversible”).
He’s out to one-up everyone and prove that he’s
the best in the world, and so he sabotages their efforts. The
movie probably didn’t need two enemies (three if you
count the FBI agent played by Catherine Zeta-Jones). That’s
a bit of overkill. He wasn’t even a good character to
begin with.
The visual aspect suffers from the same type of overload.
Director Steven Soderbergh shoots most of his own stuff (under
an alias). This time, he also brought in another cinematographer
in Chris Connier. Even though he worked on “Angela’s
Ashes,” I think having the two working like this created
too much of a mish-mash, stylistically. It tried to accomplish
everything and hit the eyes with all sorts of tricks and maneuvers
and whatnot, which made it all fail.
I have a problem with the name, too. I know that’s the
easiest way to indicate a sequel and everything. But they didn’t
really add another person. Sure, an argument could be made
that they did, but look at the big picture of the movie and
you’ll see that the twelve is essentially meaningless.
The hokeyness of the script verged on insulting, especially
at the end. But for the most part, the big problem is that
it just wasn’t fun or interesting or exciting.
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