Ocean's Eleven (2001) Reviews

• One of my all-time favorites

  jojomcheyazsong2004-05-25

  There is just something about this movie that makes it so great. There's nothing truly outstanding about any one aspect of the movie; nothing that will blow you away. However, everything is put together perfectly. Personally, I have a theory that any movie that absolutely blows you away the first time you see it, will lose its entertainment value very quickly. Not necessarily because the movie was not good, but because it just seems to get old too fast. This is NOT one of those movies. This is the kind of movie that will be enjoyed countless times. The dialogue is slick, and always to the point. There are few (if any) overdone scenes and/or lines that tend to become annoying over time. This movie flows exceptionally well. Personally, I couldn't quite figure out why until I watched the "behind the scenes" footage on the DVD. I didn't really notice all of the work they put into using as few shots as possible. The extra features on the DVD really explain it all. Almost every scene uses considerably less shots than you would think it takes to convey all of the activity going on. The music punctuates the flow of the movie and the shots extremely well. The cast is almost all big names. It's great to see actors like Pitt and Clooney and Damon come together in a movie and interact so well, without having to be the pretty boys or bad-ass heroes of the movie.

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• Just great

  blanche-22007-01-28

  George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Bernie Mac, Elliot Gould, Carl Reiner, Casey Affleck, Scott Caan, Shaobo Qin, Miguel Perez, and Livingston Dell make up "Ocean's Eleven," a 2001 film directed by Steven Soderbergh. The film also stars Andy Garcia and Julia Roberts. This is a remake of the rat pack "Ocean's Eleven," which I've never seen so I can't make comparisons. I suspect that this version has more emphasis on plot and the older one has more emphasis on the pack. The mastermind of a plot to rob Las Vegas' Bellaggio Hotel vault of $160 million is Danny Ocean, a very recent ex-con who had lots of time on his hands in prison to plan it. With the help of his buddy, Rusty Ryan (Pitt) he recruits 9 people who specialize in a particular expertise to carry out the elaborate heist. Problems come in when Ocean, obsessed with his ex-wife (Roberts), approaches her, to the annoyance of her present boyfriend, the owner of the hotel, Terry Benedict (Garcia). He "makes" Danny by sending out a bulletin with Danny's photo to the hotel staff, which puts him out of his own plot at the insistence of Rusty. But Danny isn't one to exit easily, in either marriage or robberies. This is a fast-paced, tension-filled, exciting movie that's highly entertaining. The plot is completely improbable so you have to take it for what it is - fantastic fun. And you never know whether something is going wrong or if it's part of the plan. The chemistry between the actors, particularly Clooney and Pitt, is great, and there is some wonderful acting. Clooney is solid as Ocean, a passionate man of quiet determination; Damon is terrific as an insecure participant; Don Cheadle, sporting a Cockney accent, is hilarious as an explosives expert; Elliot Gould is outrageous as their financial backer; Carl Reiner is excellent as an older con man who can do accents. Just as they all contribute their different talents to the heist, they do so in this movie. This includes the acting in the smaller roles played by Bernie Mac et al - everyone is perfect. Andy Garcia is fabulous as Benedict - both elegant and scary, he whispers instead of shouts and stays in control for the most part. Megastar Roberts is wasted - she doesn't have much to do.Any actress could have done the role, but I guess the producers wanted an all-star cast. Highly recommended for blockbuster entertainment value and star power. Just don't look for it to be realistic.

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• Fresh faced, extremely cool and slick – yes it's shallow but so what? Eat popcorn and enjoy

  bob the moo2002-02-26

  Freshly released from jail Danny Ocean begins to recruit key players to put together a job as daring as it is dangerous - the safe that holds the money for 3 casinos belonging to Terry Benedict. As well as splitting the $150 million between the gang, Danny also plans to steal back his ex-wife Tess who is currently dating Benedict. The first movie wasn't exactly brilliant - only really interesting because it brought the whole rat pack together onscreen for the first time. This could have easily fallen into the same trap - trading purely on the stars' names rather than an intrinsic entertainment value. However it manages to take what worked from the original and give it a great modern shine. The story is daft of course, but it moves forward with a sort of slick illogical cleverness that appears wonderfully clever but is, of course, highly unlikely! The story unfolds in an entertaining manner, the build up is great with no dull moments as we meet the characters and find out the details of the job bit by bit. The job itself is well handled. It is so slick that you don't mind that it couldn't possibly work in real life, but instead it just appears so clever! The romantic subplot I found to be a little redundant and I didn't think that Clooney and Roberts had good chemistry - compared to Clooney and Lopez in another great Sodenberg film `Out of Sight' where the screen crackled! However it takes up little screen time and compliments the heist quite well. Sodenberg handles the film well and doesn't allow his direction to be slick without substance - the editing is clever and Las Vegas internally and externally looks great. Clooney is fantastic in the lead - his strength is that he has great charisma which means he doesn't have to ham it up. Instead he does his stuff but allows others to try and shine while he is comfortable with a constant warm glow. Pitt does likewise - he doesn't try to hog the glory but hangs around being smooth for most of the time. This allows Pitt and Clooney to be the two leads without taking away from the ensemble feel - they also have a good relationship going here. Roberts is OK but didn't convince me that Clooney would risk so much for her. Affleck and Cann are good in a sort of comedy double act role - they don't have a lot of scenes but they are funny. Old hands Gould (so good to see him on the big screen) and Carl Riener effortlessly steal all their scenes and Matt Damon seems happy to be on a smaller part than the other stars and has a rookie sort of role. Andy Garcia has a poor role as the bad guy and doesn't manage to bring him to life - although he does make him unlikeable when next to Clooney. However, Don Cheadle, a great actor, needs a real kicking for ruining things with a terrible cockney accent that makes Dick Van Dyke sound genuine. Happily he doesn't actually have that many lines - and he only has two scenes where he has to say more than 2 sentences at a time - but really he is just terrible. Someone please explain - why his character is English? Then someone explain - why they just didn't get an English star to play it? Overall any criticisms against this are minor and are missing the point. It's not meant to be a classic or get Sodenberg more Oscar nominations. Instead it's a slick little package that is kept afloat by a starry cast, a cool soundtrack and a nice (if silly) plot. Sit, watch, chill, enjoy, forget.

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• a pleasant souffle of a film

  Buddy-512002-07-27

  Steven Soderbergh's remake of `Ocean's Eleven' is a stylish heist picture featuring some of the brightest stars in moviemaking today. The cast includes George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, and Matt Damon from the A-list, as well as such established veterans as Andy Garcia, Elliot Gould and Carl Reiner in there playing along with them. Coming right off the heels of two highly acclaimed, award-laden serious dramas (`Traffic' and `Erin Brockovich'), it's understandable that Soderbergh might have been in the mood for something a little lighter in tone right about now. Well, he has certainly found it with this property, which sails along smoothly like a well-oiled machine, with no angst-filled messages or heavy-handed themes to gum up the works. Taking the basic premise from the original 1960 film (which featured a who's-who of Hollywood stars of its own day), Soderbergh has updated it to reflect the advanced technological realities of the 21st Century. In this film, recently paroled Daniel Ocean (Clooney) has decided to mastermind the robbing of not one but three major Las Vegas casinos all owned by the nefarious Terry Benedict (Garcia). The rub is that Benedict has also recently added Ocean's ex-wife, Tess (Roberts), to his list of assets, which gives Ocean additional incentive to take Benedict for everything he's got. One of the amazing things is that the filmmakers use an actual casino as their target (the Bellagio) rather than devising a fictional one for their story's purpose. One might think it could give certain audience members the wrong ideas. Be that as it may, the director does a fine job exploiting the Vegas setting, taking us right into the heart of casino operations. A film like `Ocean's Eleven' stands or falls on the charisma of its stars, the intricacy of its plotting and the plausibility of its actions. Luckily for the audience, the film pretty much succeeds on all three counts. Scenarist Ted Griffin does a fine job gathering together the men who will participate in the heist, allowing each a moment or two to define his character and to become part of the team. The details of the plan itself are explained in very clear terms so that we rarely feel as if we are not able to follow the action. There is even an inspired use of `Clair de Lune' near the end of the picture to lend an air of romanticism to the accomplishment, for who would deny that such large-scale thievery has often carried with it a certain element of idealism and romance? After all, look how many books and films have featured robbers as heroes. It perhaps explains why Tess can go from being a principled, law-abiding citizen at the beginning of the film to being an accomplice in crime at the end, all for the love of a man – and we cheer her for it. Unlike in Soderbergh's other films, we do not find hidden depths lurking beneath the shining handsome surface of this movie, and we certainly carry no nutritious food for thought away with us from this film as we did from the others. In fact, `Ocean's Eleven' is all ABOUT shining handsome surface and it makes no pretension of being about anything else. It's cinematic junk food of the highest order, but, then, since when has junk food not been satisfying?

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• Tasty cast in very cool and slick movie

  Jenny Ho2002-03-05

  What a tasty prospect for a film: George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Andy Garcia, Julia Roberts and for the young at heart amongst us, Joshua Jackson of 'Dawson's Creek' fame in a cameo role -all directed by the Oscar winning Steven Soderbergh! George Clooney plays Danny Ocean who soon after being released from prison, puts together a team of eleven to undertake a robbery of the three biggest casinos in Las Vegas in an attempt to bring in a reward of $150 million. What soon becomes clear is that it's not the money which will give Danny the ultimate satisfaction, but the opportunity to get revenge on the owner of the three casinos he is robbing -Benedict (Andy Garcia) who just happens to be the new beau of Danny's ex, Tess (Julia Roberts). Some of the gang of eleven are more memorable than others -especially the Chinese acrobat, the explosives expert with a dodgy cockney accent and the medallion wearing Reuben -aka Monica Gellar's dad! The cast are brilliant at acting cool -even if all Brad Pitt is doing is snacking on the screen (he does this a lot!), you are still transfixed by him because he looks so good on screen. What makes the story so intriguing is the fact that Danny's mission seems so impossible: security in the casinos is paramount and the route to the reward is littered with obstacles. The number of close calls that the gang is faced with is great fun and one can't help but root for these crooks throughout the film. It is also refreshing to watch a film which is dominated by male stars and is not filled with macho swearing. Instead, we have a banter between the stars which is indicative of their camaraderie. 'Ocean's Eleven' is a welcome option in the choice of movies available at the moment which is dominated by Oscar nominees that are not going to be everyone's cup of tea. With this film, it's simply a case of sit back and enjoy the fun!

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