The Plan is Almost Too Perfect

Rating: 7/10 (2 May 2015)

This was a movie that kind of confused me as a kid in that this was one of the first movies I saw where the protagonists commit a crime. I remember asking my dad, "so these are the bad guys?" His response was along the lines of "well, they may be stealing something but they're still the good guys." I still liked the movie as a kid, but this concept confused me a little bit. Many years later, it is still a delightful B movie to watch.
It is pretty awesome that they have so many people on their team to create an ensemble cast, but some of them get barely any screen time when I would want to see an equal balance of the cast. For example, all we know about the little acrobat is that he is really good at what he does since he doesn't speak much English, besides dropping the second use of "f***" in the movie. We also don't delve too deep into the back story of certain characters, such as the oldest member on the team. We know all of these guys either have a connection to Ocean or Pitt's character or that they are found, and for this senior citizen we know he has a connection to Pitt's character and that is about it.
The funniest bits of the film come from the twins, one of whom is played by Casey Affleck, who really gets how annoying his character is supposed to be. One of my favorite parts of the film is when Affleck's character's toy car is going faster than his brother's monster truck just to get destroyed by his brother.
Getting back to the point of the movie, the heist seems to go way too smoothly, which is meant to satisfy the viewers I guess, but a great film requires conflict - no matter if it is external or internal - but this film's struggle seems mainly to be internal struggles within Ocean and his enemy played by Andy Garcia. One is trying to win his ex- wife back, and the other is dying inside as his money is getting stolen. As Brad Pitt's character points out, it is really selfish of Ocean to concoct this plan with some motivation to win Tess back. Romance makes a good subplot in movies - in fact a lot of producers want at least some type of romance in their movies - and while it holds up and illustrates that Ocean is a better man than Garcia's character, but it seems to stray from the focus on the rest of the team.
While watching this my friends were pointing out how gadgets in this movie go unexplained, especially for a film released in 2001 where this type of technology wasn't even in many James Bond films. Each step of the plan seems to go almost too well, with the exception that they almost blow the acrobat away.
This is an enjoyable heist film that makes us feel for Ocean, but I wish there was more connection to the other characters in the film.