So Much Fun It Ought To Be A Crime

Rating: 8/10 (22 March 2012)

Watching George Clooney and Brad Pitt battle it out for smoothest cat in Vegas shouldn't be this much fun to watch. "Ocean's Eleven" is a smart, breezy caper comedy that glides along on enough wit and cool, jazzy energy to make you enjoy getting snookered by the pretty boys.
Clooney is Danny Ocean, a con man who just lost four years and his wife to a term of confinement in the New Jersey penal system. Now he wants to get even, with interest. He plans a scam involving himself and ten confederates, including right-hand man Rusty (Pitt), targeting three of Las Vegas's richest casinos in a single evening for a nine-figure haul.
Asked why, Danny shrugs and says it's because "it's never been tried." Frank Sinatra and his Rat Pack would say otherwise, but this "Ocean's" is cooler, funnier, and more suspenseful than theirs. Normally I'd rather watch Frank and Dino than George and Brad, but the latter two made the better film.
Ted Griffin's script and Steven Soderbergh's direction do a lot to sell you on a clever if shaky plot. When Danny asks his wife Tess (Julia Roberts) why she dumped him, she responds with a line that keys in on the way the picture operates: "You've met too many people like you." Danny, Rusty, and their merry criminal associates seem to communicate mostly through nods and one-liners, not wasting time explaining things.
"I owe you for that thing with the guy in the place," is how one of the Eleven, money man Rueben (Elliott Gould), puts it to Danny. This in-the-know argot works for everyone else, too.
A lot of movies try for the big ensemble cast, but this one finds the right balance between star power and character performances. My favorites: Andy Garcia as a standout bad guy and Carl Reiner as the oldest, most sympathetic member of the Eleven.
While there's not a lot of depth, you hardly mind when what you see and hear gleams and purrs the way "Ocean's Eleven" does. "Eleven" is both a puzzle picture and a love letter to Vegas at the turn of the 21st century, with its dizzying array of gaudy monstrosities and gyrating dancing girls. The music is a frothy stew of Elvis, Perry Como, Berlin, and Debussy. It pulls you in, and keeps you from thinking too hard until long after the credits roll.
Yet I find "Ocean's Eleven" more enjoyable on re-viewings. I say this despite the plot holes in the way things work out. Plot holes or not, "Ocean's Eleven" puts care into how it works. You get to actually enjoying how the film sets up its misdirection plays and basks in the impossible smoothness of the lead characters. And the dialogue is hilarious.
**SPOILERS BELOW**
*** SPOILERS Everyone has noted one thing I missed, the stacks of flyers that magically appear inside the vault. But about Danny spending all that time being "beaten up" in that guarded room, especially when the lights go out? Aren't there too many witnesses to trace Danny and the others to the scam? And what about the mini-scam played on young Linus (Matt Damon), when he is told Danny has been taken out of the operation, only to be surprised when Danny greets him inside an elevator? Why pull that on your youngest, least experienced team member? Well, it was a fun reveal, and I guess that was the point. SPOILERS END ***