Should Have Walked Away...

Rating: 4/10 (30 May 2007)

It's third time unlucky, yet again. First Spider-man 3, then Shrek 3, Pirates: End of the World. And now this.
It's not as bad as Ocean's Twelve (but then, what could be?) and Vegas has never looked better. Great cinematography, especially as the plane lands at the airport, with all the hotel resorts visible from the runway.
But it's an awful grind nonetheless. When the two decent gags you've already seen in the trailer, you know you're in trouble. The McGuffin (plot premise) is quite dodgy. With the first, you know it's a) the money and b) Ocean getting Tess (Julia Roberts) back that's the motivator. Like most heist films, much of the fun is the getting together of the gang. It's hard to mess that up, whether it's The Dirty Dozen or The Wild Geese etc.
With Ocean's Twelve, well, er, they had to get the money back for the guy they robbed. Not so thrilling. Spoils the 'happy ever after' finale of the first one.
Here the Elliot Gould character, Reubens, is stiffed by new casino kingpin Al Pacino and has a heart attack. So the rest of the gang decide to take Pacino down to cheer Reubens up. Sounds better than it reads. You think, how could Reubens be so naive as to trust this shark, anyway? He's hung out with crooks, after all. It's all a dodgy premise that you don't believe, nor the whole Mission Impossible routine they go into right away. It's like watching The Krypton Factor and none of that cool David Holmes music can alter that. It's just boring.
Neither Julia Roberts nor Catherine Zeta-Jones reprise their roles, though that may be no bad thing. They're not even referenced by the leads, though. You don't really believe this gang would risk heading for the slammer for decades, estranged from their loved ones, just to generate a pep talk for their ill chum.
Any humour is sort of understated twee and self-regarding. Or just naff. Eddie Izzard shows up again, but oddly he can't really carry a role off like this. He's not larger than life, his voice is too light, he can't measure up to Clooney or Pitt.
There's an awful lot of talk and exposition (which is what the Izzard character is brought in to do, it seems) from start to finish but I couldn't catch a lot of it. I mean, really, you just have to strain a bit to hear the dialogue all the way through. It's off-putting, and it seems to be a trend with modern blockbusters. You almost suspect it's deliberate, to put the audience on tenterhooks.
We're meant to believe the gang can just buy off any minion in Willy Bank's supercasino just like that, bribing them to do stuff whenever it's convenient.
There are one or two flickers on interest during the final heist... and that's it. The finale is a rip-off from the first one, substituting fireworks for the beauty of the Bellagio fountains, and a nondescript Sinatra song for Debussy's lovely Clare da Lune.
The film looks good, and if you're heading to Vegas for the first time, check it out on DVD. But don't spend money going to see it. It's a real grind. Even one hour in I was waiting for it to be over, and thinking, wow, there's another HOUR to go...
Diminishing returns here: after the first big win, we've ploughed money into the box office and got less back for it.