style in motion

Rating: 10/10 (15 January 2005)

The key to understanding Ocean's Twelve and enjoying it is to realize that this film does not try to be a film about a bunch of gangsters pulling off a heist. It is a film about style. When it is explained in the end how they pulled off their heist, we understand that almost everything they did in the last third of the movie had no reason at all. They just did it for the style points and to make their adversary's defeat even more bitter. In my book, that's style. The movie flows freely, never really climaxing, watching beautiful people with beautiful voices, dressed in the height of fashion. It is amusing, not really funny except occasionally, not really suspenseful, but it is permeated by the feeling that everyone involved had a lot of fun - and it practically oozes out of the screen infecting the audience. It seems as if Soderbergh thought that he had done "his heist-movie" in Ocean's Eleven, so now he made the "meta heist-movie". It is a thoroughly enjoyable experience and i left the theater with a feeling of joy in my heart and the wisdom of true style in my bones. Style Uber Alles! Mahalo!