An Empty Shell Game with the viewing audience as the mark.

Rating: 1/10 (20 December 2004)

I usually try to keep silent about movies I really disliked, but this one goes too far, and seems to be getting off the hook with both the public and reviewers. The two main problems this film had were: 1. The plot, tension, action, and every other feature possible were vastly inferior to the Oceans 11 remake from two years ago. That movie was also on the light and fluffy side of things, but at least it had some real thriller elements and some good solid action to fill out the plot holes. This film has almost no action, no tension (this is not a thriller), and the characters are obviously all just rich actors sitting around BSing (reading their script), admittedly having a great time doing so, but...
Which leads into point #2: this is a very boring film. This is why I have never written a review like this. Every time someone else reviews a film I liked, and calls it boring, I feel that the review is unfair and should not have been written by that person since they obviously don't like the particular genre. The problem is I love flawed but interesting action thrillers like Ocean 11 (both original and the remake). O-12 had far too much dialog from these gleeful stars. The so called brilliance of the two ringleaders George Clooney and Brad Pitt was so trite and unbelievable. The things they could find out about totally unknown identities of other crime figures were ridiculous. None of the lead roles demonstrated the least bit of superior intelligence in anything they said or did, except possibly Katherine Z-J, but she wasn't a criminal, so what is the point?
Finally, the Julia Roberts thing was a travesty. I just hated it. It wasn't funny. It was only an empty shell game, and the only mark was the entire theatre audience for wasting $6 or $8 on such an empty movie. This whole film was like a loose, very weak imitation of The Spanish Prisoner. Since all the crooks had no brains, it was totally unbelievable and boring.