Has its moments, but overall it was a bit too much (though I liked it better on repeat viewings)

Rating: 7/10 (11 December 2004)

...Steven Soderbergh, with his cast returning (and then some) from the first film, can create results that show how talented they are. Ocean's Eleven was a fun, fresh kind of heist picture, that worked off a good story on good characters, and had enough wit with comedy to balance out the more dramatic elements. Ocean's Twelve, on the other hand, juggles with the story like Tarantino on whip-its. I understood the premise pretty well from the trailers (Benedict, played by Garcia, wants all of his money back, or all eleven will be dead, so they high-tail it to Europe for a couple of prime heists). What sometimes boggled me were how the double crosses were handled, or how certain character knew others and so on and so forth. Adding to this confusion- or rather, not so much confusion as not really investing much interest in the story- Soderbergh fuses the film with his camera-work that is stylish, but overly so. It's one thing to be expressive with the camera, as Soderbergh can be (Traffic works very well off of the hand-held usage and filters). It's another thing to draw attention to the technical side while the story jump-ropes.
On top of this, the actors, while sometimes on the money (in particular Vincent Cassell in what could be his American breakthrough role as the "night-fox"), can also be a little too thin to deal with. I understand it's a silly caper comedy, but I should be able to invest my emotions with these people, and about two-thirds into the movie I didn't care much about them. Take Catherine Zeta-Jones' character, playing a cop who once had a fling with Rusty (Pitt). Are we supposed to not like her, or like her, or kinda go back and forth. She's gorgeous to look at, but she's not given the kind of one-liners the others get. By the time the third act rolls around, the scenes seem like they've been filmed improv style (not a total downer), but without much coherence to where the story to go.
Basically, I knew I didn't totally despise Ocean's Twelve, however the sense of over-load made me say to myself a few times "ok, so what's the point?" I respect that the actors had fun making the film, as it is a lot better than being miserable through the shoot. But when it starts to distract from the focus of the scenes there's trouble (I could see smirks on them in some scenes where they could of had more of a better grip on what was really going on). Now, this is not to say I don't enjoy it when a director implements a crazy kind of style- Kill Bill vol. 1 is a triumph for that very reason- as long as it doesn't try and compensate for something wrong with the material. To put it another way, Ocean's Twelve is like an art-film that's struggling to break away from the hackneyed, conventional Hollywood 'hip' kind of standard, and the result is an equal amount of boredom, fascination, and slight indifference. There's also a sweet, if occasionally tiresome, jazz score that rings of 70's TV. C+ (6/10)