Getting to the end was a bit tedious

Rating: 7/10 (1 July 2007)

I was transported back to the early sixties during the opening credits to this film. The big band sound saturated you with that Rat Pack sensation where you almost expect Sinatra, Dean and Davis Jr. to walk out into the theater and serenade you with some new material. Unfortunately, that doesn't happen, and if I had a copy of this movie, I would have to play it a second time just to be able to play along with the new establishment of the Rat Pack. I have to interject a side story that seems to have paralleled the filming of this movie, so bear with me because I think it probably helped to guide this movie and probably saved it from some film making pitfalls: The new Rat Pack consist of primarily George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon with charter memberships with Elliot Gould, Carl Reiner and Bernie Mac (who recently announced his retirement from film - we'll see if that's true eventually). The reports say that during the shooting of the entire filming, they had one huge high steaks poker game going on that the entry fee started at $50,000. Sometimes I wonder if their heads were in the movie or the game. There were more than just the Rat Pack in play here, and most of the cast had it's opportunity to cash in on the game. I guess my problem with this movie was the cohesiveness of the script. Sometimes it just had the Valley Girl mentality to it: "And then he went:"Whoa", and then the other dude said: ".. but then this guy said this, and everything feel apart", and then the first guy said: "DUDE! He should have talked to me first" and then.... The timing sequences were OK save the somewhat arbitrary plot tanglers that almost plagued this story like clockwork. BUT!!! The ending is always so much fun, and the final insults of retribution so well planned that you just can't help enjoy yourself to the point where the film almost redeems its self. As usually, it seems that Clooneys' Ocean has ever been calculating all possible angles to this objective that the ending satisfies anyones annoyance at paying taxes. The bad guy (Pacino) gets reamed, that's all that matters. Also, I have always been an Ellen Barkin fan. Even though the use of this woman is extremely limited in this film, does anyone know where I can get a pheromone injection like Damon uses during the latter part of this film? Again, not quite thumbs up, but definitely not thumbs down.