I loved this movie

Rating: Null/10 (16 December 2001)

VIVA LAS VEGAS
Ocean's Eleven had some pretty high standards to live up to. What, with it's a-list cast that includes George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts, it's Academy Award winning director Steven Soderbergh of Erin Brockovich and Traffic fame, and, of course, if you remake an old Rat Pack classic, you better do it right.
And they did.
The plot of Ocean's Eleven by itself is great. Danny Ocean (Clooney) is a con artist who just got out of jail. And he's already got a new gig in mind. He wants to `knockoff' three casinos in Las Vegas: the Mirage, the Bellagio, and the MGM Grand. He enlists the help of his friend Rusty (Pitt), another schemer and together they set off to gather a crew of nine others to make...Ocean's eleven. The `others' they enlist include such big name stars as Matt Damon as the pickpocket Linus, Casey Affleck (Ben's younger brother) as the vehicle guy Virgil, and Don Cheadle as the ammunitions man, aptly named Basher.
There has to be some bad guy in all this, if you don't count every single man involved with the heist as a `bad guy'. That role is played perfectly by Andy Garcia as Terry Benedict, the owner of all three casinos who happens to be dating Ocean's ex-wife, Tess (Roberts). He isn't a bad guy, but he's ruthless. You don't want him to catch the bad...er...good guys. Even when they begin to rob the casino.
The tagline for Ocean's Eleven is `Are you in or are you out?' I'm in. This movie was awesome. Only one word comes to mind when you walk out of this movie: cool. The clothing, the music, the atmosphere, the way they talk. They are cool all the way. Like the original Rat Pack, they have a certain...air about them. They seem so laid back and relaxed about what they're doing. At the end of the movie I couldn't help but begin to hum the words to `Smooth Criminal.' They were smooth as stone.
Every person in this movie contributed something. With out anyone single person in the 11 the job wouldn't have worked. It was amazing the things they did and the ways they did them. I won't give anything away, but they even tell you the secret of the ending in the middle, with out you even knowing it.
Witty dialogue and good acting make this movie a keeper, but something else caught my eye. The way in which they showed you how everything was done. Most of the time with the bigger or more important parts, they would show you what everyone else thought was going on, but when you discovered that wasn't the case, they replayed from the `eleven's' point of view. This was a really good way to keep the audience guessing and to make the movie look fun.
There is one thing I didn't like about this movie though. When Linus (Damon) would pickpocket someone, they would slow the picture down and close up on his hand. This bothered me for two reasons. One, it took some of the mystery away in one scene where it was critical he `lift' something without getting caught. Two, it made it too movie like. In real life, pickpockets work so quickly and slyly that a person standing next to them couldn't even see it happen. They should have just kept the camera rolling like they did in the rest of the scenes.
I suggest that anyone who is looking for something light and fun to watch, go see Ocean's Eleven. The feel of the movie will get you happy. Just like the plot of this movie, a whole lot of little things pull together to make a great picture.