Topsy turvy *spoilers*

Rating: Null/10 (22 February 2002)

Ocean's 11 gets going very slowly, but the actual robbery is well done. Of the actors on display Clooney and Pitt are good, Don Cheadle sports a horrible cockney accent (at least, that's what it's supposed to be). Andy Garcia is superb -as usual, although I don't recall him playing a villain very often.
And maybe this is the thing - because Andy Garcia plays his part so well - as the highly professional, no-nonsense casino owner, he actually manages to become the most likeable character. Whilst he's supposed to be the 'baddie', he is of course actually the one getting f... getting screwed over. Of course he's made out to be the devil incarnate when he says he'd take $160 mil over Julia Roberts but then...well so would I! (mind you, in a strange way they both come to the same thing). However, since the last scene shows his two goons following Brad, George and Jules, it is intimated that he may yet have the last laugh (basically - you decide).
Other than that, many of the film's jokes are rather weak; in fact Soderburgh seems to simply rely on Clooney and Pitt's facial expressions to generate humour, which probably works well in the US, but maybe not so well here. Oh - and the Chinese bloke, because as we all know the Chinese are simply there for our amusement. Humour aside, the technical details of the heist are absurd: "Yeah well we'll use part of a nuclear bomb to disable all of Vegas for a minute or so, to turn off the power to laser detecting things, and once we're in the vault, we'll phone Andy up and tell him he can have half his money if he lets us out, only...we aren't really there. We're the SWAT team that Andy calls to sort out the situation and................zzzzzzzzzz
Ultimately the film has a certain gloss that is rather attractive, and the robbery sequence (a good half hour of the film, maybe more) is involving enough to elevate Ocean's 11 in to the 'watch but don't buy category'.