Hell yes.

Rating: 8/10 (14 December 2004)

The remake of Ocean's 11 is a tremendously entertaining movie. I personally find Brad Pitt and George Clooney to be among the most watchable actors working today, so I found the movie to be hugely appealing despite numerous plot holes, an almost nonstop barrage of clichés, a ridiculous ending, and Don Cheadle. Before I go on, I should mention that I think Cheadle is an immensely talented actor with some great performance's under his belt, such as his work in Boogie Nights, Traffic, and A Lesson Before Dying (sure, he can't pronounce Vladivostok, but it was still a great performance). The problem with his character here, probably the most controversial role of the entire movie, is that he was forced to take on this ridiculous accent, making him the Jar Jar Binks of Ocean's 11. Pretty sad, but I hope it serves as a lesson for how dumb it is to have well known actors take on thick accents. It does nothing but call attention to itself and invite criticism for the actor's ability to pull it off. And given the content of the discussion boards on the IMDb, Cheadle didn't pull it off so well.
That being said, the rest of the movie is enormously entertaining, even though Andy Garcia, who I have had an unjustifiable aversion to ever since Desperate Measures, turns his character of the ridiculously rich Terry Benedict, owner of three casinos in Las Vegas, into an almost cartoonish villain. George Clooney plays the title character Danny Ocean, recently released from prison where he had plenty of time to develop intricate plots for robbing three casinos simultaneously. The parole board asks him if he thinks he would ever return to a life of crime were he released, he smiles, gets released, and promptly returns to a life of crime. This is the kind of character that Clooney was born to play.
Brad Pitt plays Ocean's Second, the second man in charge and much of the pull behind getting this whole thing together. We get the usual montage of hilarious antics being committed by those that are to be sought to be among Ocean's 11 (edited together on the same template used to introduce us to the colorful characters in Armageddon), each one fulfilling the need for another stereotype. In this way, the movie is pretty weak, but it is so entertaining to watch the robberies pulled off that it makes up for a lot of these shortcomings.
Brad Pitt lends his massive presence to the film as Rusty, an old friend of Danny's. Rusty is an interesting character, sort of a freelancer in Vegas, living his life in the casinos, obviously raking in comfortable amounts of cash from his less than legal endeavors, and willing only to dress in the highest of fashion. Strange, however, for a man to constantly wear such high priced clothing when he is ALWAYS eating. Matt Damon plays the part of the pickpocket, whose skills come into good use in the plot in ways which I will not reveal, Don Cheadle plays the demolitions expert, Bernie Mac gets a great role as a card dealer with a not so clean past, and Elliott Gould makes a huge turn from his character in American History X to play the part of a washed up con man, eager for revenge against Terry Benedict, who put him out of business.
The idea is to rob the central safe that stores the cash for the three casinos in question. Supposedly this is the most ingenious and impenetrable vault ever created by mankind (as this is generally how it is described throughout the movie), which begs the question of why the blueprints for the vault are kept under the watchful eye of a cheaply rented night security guard. That's like leaving the keys to Fort Knox in plain view outside the vault and protected by a thin pane of glass.
(spoilers) Complicating matters, conveniently for the script, is the little factoid that Benedict is now dating Ocean's ex-wife, who left him because he was involved in a life of crime. It's interesting to see the movie take place in what is to me the familiar setting of Las Vegas, but it is not enough to distract attention from the disastrous romantic content of the movie.
Not only does Tess (Roberts) come off as a stiff and exceedingly unpleasant woman, but she left Danny in the first place for being a criminal and landing himself in prison. Then he pulls off this astronomical heist, stealing millions and millions of dollars from her current love interest (as well as managing to get him to admit on camera that he cares more about money than he does about Tess), and THEN she wants him back. What, she didn't want to be with him before because his criminal life landed him in prison, but now she wants him back because he's GOOD at being a criminal? Please.
Nevertheless, while the ending almost completely ruined the movie because it leaves such a bad aftertaste, the rest of the film is hugely entertaining, bad fake accents notwithstanding. There are lots of twists and turns, lots of people get what is coming to them, and as is to be expected from a movie starring Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Matt Damon and Julia Roberts, the star power is substantial. It ends badly, but it's great up to that point. It's just too bad that the bad part is so near the end and therefore in the front of your mind at the end of the movie.