Soderbergh does Mamet

Rating: Null/10 (20 February 2012)

The "Ocean's 11" franchise started in 1960 with Lewis Milestone's "Ocean's 11", a glossy heist thriller which saw a gang of thieves pulling a daring operation in which several Las Vegas casinos are simultaneously robbed. Milestone was a bit of an auteur, known for several fairly good war films, but his "Ocean's 11" remains an anonymously directed affair. Instead, crooner and mega-star Frank Sinatra seems to be the one pulling all the strings, playing the titular role of heist-master Danny Ocean within the film, and the star and money-man calling the shots outside the film. The production was reportedly wrapped around Sinatra's lengthy stays in Las Vegas, where he performed various concerts at up-scale casinos, hotels and theatres.
While Milestone's "Ocean's 11" made ridiculous amounts of money back in 1960 – everyone wanted to see its big name cast: Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr, Peter Lawford and Angie Dickinson – today it's a hugely dull movie, with large chunks of exposition, unnecessary filler and a heist that's been bettered by countless heist films released both before and after. With notions as to what is and isn't "cool" constantly changing, "Ocean's 11" also looks completely neutered, its "smooth", "relaxed" and "cool" cast now positively lifeless. Half a century later, only Sinatra comes off looking well, though precisely because of him the film plays like one of those bad crime movies by modern African American rappers, designed to show off the star's "riches", "bling", "money", "rule breaking", "flashy accessories" and "bad boy criminality" (Sinatra had close ties with the criminal underworld – both the Italian mafia and US government). It's a white bread version of such mega-celebrity egotism. Milestone's best scenes? A colourful Saul Bass opening and a wordless ending shot, much imitated by Tarantino, in which our suited gang of heroes walk down a pavement. Everything between these scenes can be missed.
Steven Soderbergh would release a remake of "Ocean's 11" in 2001. It's a much better film, featuring a cast of photogenic mega stars (Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Matt Damon, Elliot Gould etc), smooth operators, bad boys and likable character actors. "I owe you for the thing with the guy in the place," is the line which gets the plot rolling, a slice of dialogue which epitomises the film's comically nonchalant attitude. If Milestone's film strove to be cool, Soderbergh goes for a kind of meta-cool, our cast both too cool for cool and playing uncool with coolness, mega stars Brad Pitt always chomping down on food, Matt Damon bumbling with style and George Clooney perpetually basking in his own silly magnificence. As the heist movie is intrinsically formulaic – first act: assemble the "samurai", second act: plan the heist, third act: escape or get captured – Soderbergh indulges in a kind of postmodern devil-may-care attitude. Meanwhile, the film's aesthetic is retro cool, with European/French touches, glossy locales, eye popping lights, sparkling surfaces/bulbs, lush cinematography, romantic editing/music, liquidy shapes and a camera that salivates over its suave actors, smooth villains and expensive locales. It's all about the money.
Soderbergh describes his "Ocean's 11" as a "big wind up toy", and while its designed to be "just entertainment", it does fit in with a number of the director's "heavier" films ("King of the Hill", "Che", "Traffic", "Eric Brockovich", "The Girlfriend Experience"), which have focused on economic inequality, economic depressions, Marxist revolutionaries and violent corporate muscle. Indeed, the casinos where Soderbergh's heists take place, the Bellagio and several other mega-casinos on the LA Strip, were built in the 1990s by entrepreneurs and corporate raiders like Steve Wynn (the real life model of Benedict, the film's villain, played sexily by Andy Garcia) with junk bonds and help from organised crime lords. With its art galleries and upscale restaurants, the Bellagio was then part of a diversification strategy in LA to earn profits from non-gaming sources. Yet the appeal of all these amenities, like gambling itself, is fuelled by a drive to offer consumers escape from a reality of diminished opportunities for upward mobility (within an American economy of diminishing wages, outsourcing and continuous lay-offs). Within a postindustrial, globalized economy, gambling, and even crime, increasingly appears to offer the best way, in the words of Jackson Lears, "to get ahead in a world where work no longer seems reliable". Indeed, each of the film's robbers comes with some indication that they embody the disaffection created by the increasing division of American society into "haves" and "have nots", whether it be a criminal past, lack of work, or entrapment in a job they find to be unrewarding. Even the bank-roller behind the heist, a former casino owner named Reuben Tishkoff (smoothly played by Elliout Gould), wants revenge against a new economy in which corporate moguls like Benedict can use their financial muscle to push him out. On the flip side, such readings are contradicted by the film's need to work as a big budget wish-fulfilment fantasy, and the fact that the crime genre has always portrayed the criminal as Soderbergh does here: cinema's lovable criminals may live on the outside, but they're still perfect conformists, chasing money in their own way because of capitalism's failings.
Soderbergh would release a sequel, "Oceans 12", some years later. This one takes the form of a "con movie", its narrative bending giddily in all directions, mercilessly toying with both convention and audience expectations. The film wasn't well received, despite being as good as its predecessor, which led to Soderbergh releasing the dull, and far safer, "Oceans 13" in 2007. The villain's name is literally "Bank" (Al Pacino) in this outing, but the film is mostly dumb.
8.5/10 – Some overlooked modern heist films: Mamet's "Heist" and Neil Jordan's "The Good Thief", a remake of Melville's genre defining "Bob The Gambler".