There has to be a reason for a bunch of actors who normally get eight-figures per picture to take a paycut of an entire digit. The cast of Ocean's Eleven maintain that that reason was "fun," and in lieu of any other explanation it makes sense.
Certainly, the cast has more fun than the audience.
This is not necessarily a dis. These are attractive young millionaires -- George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Julia Roberts (also Andy Garcia and Don Cheadle) -- working and playing in Las Vegas. In their sleep, they'd have more fun than most of us will ever have in our lives.
The fact is that Ocean's Eleven, the much-talked about remake by Steven Soderbergh of the consummate Rat Pack movie, is a bit of fun even for us plebes, for a while.
How much fun it is could depend on two factors -- which sex you like to look at, and as the movie progresses, how much you liked or disliked Mission: Impossible.
Most of the women I know who've seen it call it terrific eye candy. The cast includes two of People mag's Sexiest Men Alive, Clooney (who also produced) and Pitt, the only person to be so named twice. Add in Damon, Garcia and Cheadle and you've covered much of the spectrum of female taste.
The guys get Julia Roberts, who doesn't come up much in fantasy "shag talk" on MOJO radio like, say, Jennifer Lopez, Cameron Diaz, Liz Hurley, Salma Hayek or Charlize Theron.
Still, Ocean's Eleven begins on just the right self-referential note, as befits a film following in the Cool Hall of Fame footsteps of Frank, Dino and Sammy. The original Ocean's Eleven was a bad movie, but it's the idea of it that survives and thrives.
The best ironic notes are scored early in scenes between Clooney and Pitt. Clooney is Danny Ocean, an ex-con plotting an impossible heist of three casinos at once as revenge for the casino owner (Garcia) stealing his wife (Roberts). Pitt plays card sharp Dusty Ryan. Living in L.A., Ryan is reduced to teaching Hollywood actors how to play cards for movie roles. The actors are real, including Topher Grace and Josh Jackson, and it's a good gag to see screaming girls waiting for them while a "nobody" like Ryan/Pitt walks by.
The tone is maintained atop a jazzy score (this actually has a pretty good soundtrack) through the assembly of the heistees -- including Eliott Gould as a puffy ex-casino owner and Carl Reiner as a legendary old con-man.
Ocean's becomes much less fun when the heist begins and it turns into Mission: Impossible. This is Soderbergh's favourite part of the movie, his cinematography becoming more stylishly retro and film-schooly as the audience absorbs the convoluted plot twists going, "Huh?... Why did they do that?... WTF?"
While we're at it, can we have a moratorium on the twist of having a pre-taped video of the vault/elevator/lobby superimposed on the security monitor to throw off the cops/criminal? It's in Speed, Heist, Entrapment, M.I. and now this. Only someone who hasn't seen a movie in 20 years would fall for it.
(More on: Ocean's 11).
(This film is rated PG)
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