You're In Or You're Out. You Decide.

Rating: 8/10 (26 August 2006)

*Ocean's SPOILERS* Danny Ocean (George Clooney) has just been released from prison, but has already a plan to rob 3 casinos, a plan which he explains to his best friend Rusty Ryan (Brad Pitt), a skilled conman now respectably earning a pretty good living teaching poker to TV Stars (self-mocking cameos by Joshua Jackson (Dawson's Creek), Barry Watson (7th ring of hell... oh, sorry, 7th Heaven), Holly Marie Combs (Charmed) and Topher Grace (That '70s Show)).
The plan begins to take form when Danny and Rusty pull into this scam an entrepreneur (Elliott Gould) who hates the proprietor of the 3 casinos in question, Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia) for having decided to blow up said entrepreneur's casino.
But they'll need more than just the three of them; in total, 11 men.
And so the recruitment of the remaining 8 people (between whom we have Linus (Matt Damon), a 2nd-generation pickpocketer, a couple of litigious twins (Casey Affleck and Scott Caan), a croupier (Bernie Mac), Basher Tarr, a genius in explosives (Don Cheadle), an old conman (Carl Reiner) and others...) begins, but what is Danny's real reason for the elaborated scam and coup? The money? Or the entrancing Tess (Julia Roberts), Danny's ex-wife and now Benedict's girlfriend? This is one of the few remakes (Poseidon and - as I have heard - The Hills Have Eyes are other two examples) that manage to be even more entertaining than the original (in Poseidon's case, even making a silent movie would have been more entertaining than the original movie).
The script gives us so many twists and turns that we never know what's going to happen next, while keeping that slick, classy-comedy tone, all the actors give the right tone to their characters (Clooney, Mac, Cheadle, Affleck and Caan are especially a treat, as are the firecracker dialogues between Clooney and Roberts, which bring back to mind 'The Philadelphia Story') and every single other part works toward making 'Ocean's 11' a must-see movie.
Ocean's 11: 8/10.