Something missing...

Rating: Null/10 (8 December 2001)

I can't quite say what was missing from Ocean's Eleven. The heist itself seemed a bit hard to follow with all the eleven guys contributing to distractions from the robbery itself. There seemed far too many little twists, and yet I didn't care about them. I think there isn't a single moment in the film where I shook my head in disbelief. The best heist movie of 2001 was The Score. Why? Because a simple job becomes complicated, and two guys who are not going to be the best of friends go head-to-head in the heist itself. The heist is not so complicated in the Score, but we are in DeNiro's head so we seriously sympathize with every grunt, wrong turn, and realization he goes through. (The way he actually pulls off his robbery is quite clever.)
Something about Ocean's Eleven is too sure of itself. You know what's going to happen before it does. I liked the scenery, the photography, and some of the characterizations were also quite fun. However, where are the characters and the suspense? Why is Andy Garcia so damn calm and lifeless throughout the film? The Washington Post said that Ocean's Eleven was MI, Dirty Dozen, and the Sting rolled into one. It'd like to be all those things. All I can say is the film that does the team heist to the best degree is SNEAKERS. Always will be.
Why? Because of the camaraderie of the team, the simultaneous desperation and talent in each member, the writing, the villain, the plot, the wonderful prize of "the box." The pure sweat that it ended up taking to get away with the job done. You never draw a breath in Ocean's Eleven...well, except when that mini-truck gets crushed by the monster truck. Onto to better films...