The greatest sin of Sin City

Rating: 7/10 (29 July 2006)

There are some stories which you know from the start that it won't be worth five-star. The only thing you can do is making the best with what you have and hope that it will be worth the try. Caper movies are like that. It's too much unbelievable, high-tech gadgetry is overly used and robbers rarely appear to be real human beings.
"Ocean's Eleven" is that kind of movie, but the major difference between it and the other heist movies is that it works well, whatever the difficulties might be. Directed by the always excellent Steven Soderbergh and starring Soderbergh's favorite George Clooney as the title role, "Ocean's Eleven" is one of the best heist movies since a very long time and I appreciated every bit of it, from the first to the last second.
Released about six months after the disappointing and violence-laden "3000 Miles to Graceland", "Eleven" only focuses on the complicated and meticulous planning of the robbery and the robbery itself, instead of making it a silly and looking-easy launching element, like in "3KMTG". And that's all we need. We don't need an aftermath with stupid inner battles about who's gonna keep the loot and what is gonna happen to the robbers' associations. There's also a surprisingly low amount of violence and there is no gunfight and no car chase, which is well-welcomed in that domain.
In a sense, it's like "The Score" from the same year, but on a much larger and more spectacular scale. Instead of two guys stealing a single scepter in a federal building of Montreal, you get eleven guys who try to rob $160,000,000 from three casinos in Las Vegas.
The eleven guys are the following ones: Danny Ocean (George Clooney), a charismatic and professional thief who's leading the operation; Rusty (Brad Pitt), Ocean's loyal right-hand man; Reuben (Elliot Gould), an extravagant casino owner who is also a longtime friend of Danny and Rusty; Virgil and Turk (Casey Affleck and Scott Caan), two very dysfunctional brothers from Utah; Livingston (Eddie Jemison), the electronic specialist; Basher (Don Cheadle), a bomb expert; Yen (Shaobo Kin), a Chinese acrobat; Saul (Carl Reiner), a con artist; Frank (Bernie Mac), a croupier and Linus (Matt Damon), a young pickpocket who becomes the rookie of the gang which makes that he's not aware of the strict rules and codes of the caper game.
That's a very long list of characters. But the casting has some kind of genius. The characters are so different and so good that we never lose ourselves among them. It's not like in "Platoon", where the casting is some kind of labyrinth.
When you listen to Ocean describing the vault and all of the obstacles that await the 'Eleven Team', you wonder how they're gonna make it in the most realistic way possible. Well, the screenplay is so well crafted that it can only make the viewer satisfied. Screenwriters include plot twists and safe-cracking elements without losing themselves in the complex storyline. And some scenes are so surprising that they're funny. Not ridiculous. Funny.
The boxing championship tournament is an excellent background and it's good to see Lennox Lewis and Wladimir Klitschko marching pass the crowd in the MGM Grand arena. The way that Soderbergh pictures the scenes give some grandeur to this event, which is not something that every filmmaker do.
Anyway, every Vegas spot is well shot and it makes you see that Sin City is not an ordinary America town. The crowds' reactions to the provoked black-out are eye-catching and brilliant. The final 'Team' scenes near the Bellaggio fountains are gorgeous and beautiful. So, all in all, every shot is well done...
George Clooney is good as Danny Ocean. He's as cool and charismatic as he looks, but he ends up getting too much Mr. I-know-all for me. But every character does the adequate job. Julia Roberts' performance is very mixed, but when she's good, she's good for real. Her relationship with Terry Benedict, the casino owner played by Andy Garcia, is not very convincing, but her loyalty for Danny Ocean is quite good.
Directed on a very epic scale with an incredible list of A-rated Hollywood actors, "Ocean's Eleven" is a real success, from the very first scenes to the very last scenes. No less, no more. It's a pure delight.