The Heist-Film Finally Put to Bed.

Rating: Null/10 (14 April 2005)

If Steven Soderbergh is such a great talent, then why am I so underwhelmed by his films? Why, when he attempts to make a meaningful picture, do I sense that he is being insincere, at times even patronizing? And why, when he tries to make some funky, larky piece of genre-tribute fluff, do I find myself slipping slowly into indifference?
Ocean's Twelve is Soderbergh's latest homage to the hoary Hollywood Heist genre, and it is less entertaining than Ocean's Eleven. It's not that it doesn't have amusing elements, little dashes of humor, some clever styling - it's just that none of it seems to amount to anything. The film seems to have been made in a playful, throw-away spirit, as if no one took any of it, or themselves, very seriously. This is fine by itself - certainly there have been good films made in a mood of giddy fellowship - but for a director like Soderbergh, whose movies are kind of slight anyway, this lack-of-concentration is death.
It doesn't help when your stars are a little short in the electricity department to begin with. Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Matt Damon all have the virtue of prettiness, but none of them is Mr. Personality 2005. Clooney seems like the template for a leading-man, yet like Rock Hudson before him, there's a nagging sense of the generic about him. Pitt has seemed like little more than a walking cologne-ad for a long time, and does nothing here to dispel this impression; and Damon can muster little beyond that vague nice-guy quality he tries to pass off as star-power. The supporting male performers all seem more promising, but for Soderbergh to concentrate on any of them would mean taking screen-time away from his big three, and that of course would never do.
You would hope for an infusion of charm and sex-appeal from the female principals, but alas none is forthcoming. Catherine Zeta-Jones has some intensity as a feisty, brainy Europol agent, but she's not filmed very flatteringly and her sexual rapport with Pitt never materializes. And speaking of not being filmed flatteringly, there's Julia Roberts, who should sue the cinematographer for what he does to her face. She was probably never more charming and attractive than in Erin Brockovich, so you know Soderbergh has some idea what he's doing with her, but here he makes her frankly ugly, and gets nothing out of her jokey scenes later in the film.
A movie like this should intrigue us with its plot, but the plot is so convoluted that you can only see it as a put-on. That being the case, it's up to the stars and director to entertain us with style, wit and sexiness, but each is spread so thin across the movie that we barely notice. Soderbergh's brain is obviously engaged, but he seems to have a hard time getting his heart into what he's doing. His movies have had a cold, impersonal quality ever since sex, lies and videotape, which made a virtue of cold impersonality. This same quality is not a virtue in Ocean's Twelve, which needs a fire lit under it. The movie definitely doesn't cook - hell, it barely simmers.