Clooney's Ego

Rating: 5/10 (22 January 2003)

The original "Ocean's 11" (1960) famously starred Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin and several other well-known stars of the era. The so-called "Rat Pack" were friends and the movie, a quickly slapped together story involving robbing the vaults of several Las Vegas casinos, was as much a lark for them as the movie-going audience. The modern version shamelessly appropriates the title and plot of the original film, but completely misses the point, and several major components of the first version, settling instead to be a vanity piece for the smirking but boring Mr. Clooney and company.
In 1960 Las Vegas was a relatively new venue, which had erupted from the desert in what was still a very undeveloped and rustic Nevada. World War II had ended only 15 years before, and the United States was going through a period of tremendous economic growth and optimism. The original Danny Ocean (Mr. Sinatra) and his crew had all served during the war together in the 82nd Airborne Division, and therefore were trained commandoes, and very used to working as a team. The concept of the movie is that this team of commadoes uses their wartime skills to plan and carry-out an elaborate scheme to simultaneously rob the vaults of the adjacent casinos on the strip in Las Vegas. In the original, the plan moves smoothly, until a very unexpected development deprives them of their ill-gotten gains. They leave, satisfied that their plan worked, and that the widow of one of their team is provided for, but otherwise none the richer for the criminal activities.
The Clooney fantasy is unencumbered by any such notions of plot or message; it's simply all about George and the assembled well-known Hollywood faces recruited to mimic the style of the original, which include Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon. Not war heros and comrades who are used to putting their lives in eachothers' hands, but simply an amalgamation of two bit hoods and convenient "experts" with apparently limitless funding from a sympathetic gangster (a premise also borrowed from the original)Clooney- himself a small-time robber just out of jail- smugly stumbles his way through the exposition as though this was some type of "Mission Impossible" TV show setup.
Ridiculous, inane and outright dopey, the updated "Ocean's 11" sails along through frantic attempts at clever plot twists and the bad guys make off with the loot, and handsome George seems to be on track to win back his former wife, Julia Roberts. Guess what? Crime does pay! Apparently so in this case of stolen ideas and smug self-congratulatory celebrity. Montsrously enough, there are rumors of a sequel. What's next? Clooney re-recording "New York, New York"?