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OCEAN'S ELEVEN
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Much has been made of the ways in which the new OCEAN'S ELEVEN differs from the original, but overlooked has been one of the few ways they are alike -- few if any of the Rat Pack could act either.
The original OCEAN'S, now playing on an AMC station near you, stands in hindsight as the fulcrum between the repressed, conformist Fifties and the swinging Sixties. A gang of handsome young rakes, returning war heroes from an elite combat unit, bored by peacetime pabulum and unsatisfied with Las Vegas partying, decide to reunite for one last raid -- robbing five casinos simultaneously in the last instant of the 1950's: New Year's Eve, 1959. Their motivation is explicitly zest for adventure and protest against security, so that the original movie shrewdly fuses the actors' refusal to take themselves seriously with the characters' refusal to take themselves seriously.
Now comes 2001 and the remake, but instead of capturing that boys-will-be-boys pranksterism, we must have Meaning -- so smirking Danny Ocean (George Clooney) isn't just robbing casinos, he's revenging himself by stealing from the man (Andy Garcia) who stole his wife (a never-smiling Julia Roberts, mouthing some of her worst dialog ever with a grimness that suggests she knew how dreadful it was). Sure there is a clever techno-caper with cool gadgetry and nice cons-within-cons surprises, but in its way, it's tame – the original's audacity derived from hitting five casinos at once, whereas here it's just one vault (that serves three co-owned casinos). And we never really think things are out of control, we're just watching director Stephen Soderbergh to see if we can catch the prestidigitation as it happens.
Since his one great movie SEX, LIES, AND VIDEOTAPE, Soderbergh has been shrewdly migrating mainstream in calibrated increments of movie plastic surgery, with docudrama (TRAFFIC), righteous Julia-schmaltz (ERIN BROCKOVITCH), and fairground Clooney-rides (OUT OF SIGHT, which this movie structurally reprises). But he is technically so good a director that we largely enjoy this predictable motley-crew-caper story arc (TOPKAPI meets THE DIRTY DOZEN): charming rogue, quirky specialists, team practice, apparent fiascos, clever puzzles … and of course, a temporally acceptable ending (back in 1960, crime could not cinematically pay, so the boys must lose their gains, but in 2001, the corporation is the real criminal).
Of the cast, who's simply presenting his established persona and who's actually acting? Brad Pitt shows plenty of nuances and a gift for comedy. Matt Damon credibly expands his MR. RIPLEY repertoire. Elliott Gould gleefully spouts his lines like a mud-wallowing hippo, and Carl Reiner (of all people!) is a substantive revelation. As for the rest, Nancy pronounced their epitaph as we exited: "This kind of movie is a lot easier to take when all the men are good-looking."