A brilliant satire of the heist movie... I think.

Rating: Null/10 (21 January 2006)

I sat for a couple hours after seeing Ocean's Twelve trying to figure out why Soderbergh and gang had made such an outrageous film. Too much of it didn't add up: the ridiculous laser system guarding the egg in the museum and the equally ridiculous way in which it was defeated; the flashbacks containing information that completely undermined the apparent narrative thrust; Julia Roberts' plot twist and the avalanche of seemingly nonsensical and irrelevant self-reference that immediately followed; O12 had me completely stumped. Until I re-interpreted these scenes as clues towards something else: that O12 is not, in fact, a heist movie, but a *satire* of the heist movie.
Why else would someone of Sod's stature overstuff the film with clichés, like the enigmatic and debonair master thief, and the colorful and completely trustworthy team of people who would never exist in real life? One character (the woefully underused Eddie Izzard) even overtly mentions that one particular element of the film is a cliché -- but he doesn't say what it is a cliché *of*. Notice all the decoys, impostors, holograms, secret languages... O12 is littered with breadcrumbs, and I'm willing to believe that there was never actually a spec script called "Honor Among Thieves." As a heist movie, it falls flat on its face, arguably worse than Hudson Hawk (which suffered more from sheer goofiness overload, rather than bewildering nonsense). It simply does not make sense. How did the Night Fox get into that house in Amsterdam? Conveniently not explained. How did Benedict find all of the Twelve at once? Conveniently not explained. How did Julia Roberts' plot twist work, while Matt Damon is with her but does not experience the same story change? Conveniently brushed off. How in the name of Zeus did a certain someone show up out of the blue while the gang was locked up and help them with a certain problem? How was this individual aware of certain aspects of Isabel Lahiri's paperwork? An outlandish narrative convenience... or a satire of the genre? Why was so little narrative dedicated to convincing the audience of Benedict's extremely vindictive motivation? How else do you explain the obvious expenses the thieves racked up in their very quest to make money? I mean, come on, when Damon and the other two remaining thieves start spouting off all the heist jargon as they try to figure out a contingency plan... it's preposterous. No one talks like that.
Maybe I'm reaching. But either way you slice it, O12 is much, much more enjoyable as a *satire* of the heist film. That's the only way I can understand the film. I know why a sequel was made, certainly: The original made over $450 million dollars worldwide, far and away Sod's most financially successful film. Its closest competitor is Erin Brockovich, which made a little over $250M worldwide, and Traffic clocks in at a little over $200M. Successful, certainly, but not blockbusters like O11 was. A sequel was as inevitable as death and taxes. So it occurs to me that Sod decided he might as well have fun with it -- screw with the audience a little, poke fun at the actors themselves (good naturedly), and they still walked away with about $360M.
There also might be a meta-commentary going on about American audiences and how little they catch on to stylistic subversion (I am an American myself, for the record) but it's pure speculation. All I can tell you is that O12 simply does not work as a straightforward film and can really only be enjoyable as a satire. There's simply too many outrageous scenes and too many clichés. There are simply too many lines of dialog that only make sense if the whole movie is a genre skewer. It's also much easier on my brain. And I'd like to think that Sod hadn't morphed into a cynical robber baron who no longer cared about making a good movie.