Not many men would bring a girl George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Andy Garcia as a gift for a first date, so I guess I was lucky.
After our rendezvous at the pub my date and I went back to Chez Moi for coffee. And once inside he pulled it out and slipped it into my hand with great ceremony and a kiss – a copy of Oceans Eleven on DVD! Sweet, wasn't it?
We popped the disc in the player and cuddled up on the sofa. I was pretty comfy and at this point I decided that I wasn’t likely to see much of the film. But boy, was I wrong!
The beginning is a little slow, I grant you, and I probably paid a little too much attention to the Boy Wonder rather than the TV, but then the true rhythm of the movie kicks in.
Oceans Eleven then becomes a flick that grabs your attention and reels you in. It isn’t particularly action-packed or fast-paced as you would expect from your run-of-the-mill heist movie, but rather a slow burn that manages to capture the tension of preparing for the big job perfectly.
Danny Ocean (George Clooney) is a big time thief. He’s smooth, well connected and smart, an ideas man, but his Achilles heel is his beautiful ex-wife Tess (Julia Roberts). She leaves him and for the first time in his career, he gets caught and ends up inside. The film opens with his first day as a free man, and he’s got big plans.
Danny intends to assemble a crew (the eponymous Oceans Eleven) to pull off the most ambitious heist ever seen – the theft of $150 million from a state of the art underground vault containing cash from three of Las Vegas’ most profitable casinos.
The hand-picked crew includes a supreme fixer and card sharp (Brad Pitt), a pickpocket (Matt Damon),
an explosive expert (a normally excellent Don Cheadle sporting a rather awkward Mockey accent), a card dealer, a retired thief, a surveillance expert, a very bendy little Chinese acrobat, two frontmen and a bitter casino mogul to bankroll the whole con, played by Elliot Gould.
The kicker is that the casinos in question are owned by ruthless entrepreneur Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia), who happens to be the new main squeeze of the ex Mrs Ocean.
This is an awfully good-looking movie. With a cast list that reads like a Who’s Who of the Hollywood A List, it’s not really surprising. There’s hardly a moment when there isn’t someone or something beautiful on screen. And like the original 1959 version (which starred Rat Pack legends Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr and Peter Lawford), it’s a character driven piece showcasing some of the finest in contemporary acting talent.
The performances are consistently of a high quality. There is an interesting chemistry between Pitt and Clooney, which adds a fascinating energy to their shared scenes.
The screenplay is tight and the dialogue cool and quippy, with plenty of one liners to get you giggling. The production design is very slick and stylish, the costumes sharp and edgy and the locations glitzy and glamorous.
Stephen Soderbergh directs intelligently, managing to keep up the interest levels through the intricate planning stages of the con, until the final explosive reel when the plan is actually executed. This film could have had serious pace issues, but it does work. There are some difficult moments cleverly handled…..montages of story elements pieced together with clever wipes, choppy cutting to introduce large numbers of characters without losing momentum, and the excellent scene as Ocean explains the difficulties of the upcoming heist to his crew.
It’s surprising to say, given the cast list, but this is an ensemble piece. Pitt, Damon and Clooney are as good as you would expect them to be. Garcia is evil in a beautifully centred, zen kind of way, so that you really can’t feel sorry for his loss.
The disappointment, I have to say, is Julia Roberts. I think she is one of the most beautiful women in the world but I just didn’t feel she had it in this film. She didn’t look glamorous enough for the role, there was no chemistry between her and Clooney, or her and Garcia. The role seemed underdeveloped and I just couldn’t see her as a believeable catalyst to make Ocean embark on this crazy scheme purely to get her back. Picky, I know, but I can’t help how I feel. I think the role needed someone with more overt sex appeal and glamour. Halle Berry or even Jennifer Lopez might have been better cast.
That aside, Ocean’s Eleven is a classy, intelligent, fun movie that relies on great performances and a decent screenplay. That in itself is a pleasure in these days of special FX blockbusters.
I can’t say how faithful it is to the original, as I haven’t seen it, but now I certainly intend to look it out.
As far as the DVD is concerned, sound is Dolby Digital 5.1 or 2.0 Surround. The aspect ratio is 1:85:1 widescreen and the certificate is 12 with some mild and very occasional strong cussing and infrequent mild violence.
The DVD conversion is pin sharp and vibrant, the very cool jazz inspired score sounds rather sexy even on my sad sound system and the sectorisation is reasonable, with 35 chapters over a 181 minute movie.
The interactive menus are surprisingly poorly animated though and uninspiringly programmed and the case is a rubbish American style cardboard one and we don’t like those.
Special features are average for such a new DVD conversion. There’s a reasonable HBO behind the scenes documentary with snippets of interviews with the stars. A second documentary, The Look of the Con, is shorter but far more interesting to me, and deals with production and costume design and how the movie was made to look so slick and sharp.
There are three trailers, interesting only because one of the few deleted scenes appears in them, and there are some DVD Rom features which I haven’t used as I don’t have a DVD Rom drive in my computer (a game I believe, and a link to the official website).
There are also two feature-length commentaries, one with stars Matt Damon, Andy Garcia and Brad Pitt, and the other with Director Steven Soderbergh and Screenwriter Ted Griffin. The stars’ commentary is jokey and vaguely amusing if you enjoy that kind of thing. The filmmaker’s commentary is a little more interesting, dealing with the technical and logistical areas of making the movie. Commentaries are one of those things you either love or hate. I actually like them because I feel they give me an insight into the film making process, which is something that fascinates me endlessly.
I noticed, for example, that Brad Pitt was eating in almost every scene in the film and I wondered why that was. The commentary told me that in one of the first scenes, Pitt said that he felt he should be eating and it became a running joke. In one particularly gruelling scene, which had to be re-shot over and over, Pitt apparently ate some 40 shrimp cocktails before they got the footage in the can. I know it’s daft, but that’s the kind of information I like. It answered my question!
All in all, this is a DVD I would have bought myself if I hadn’t been lucky enough to be given it as a gift. It’s a very watchable and entertaining movie.
The best price I could find was £11.99 including postage from www.play.com and I’d say it was well worth the money.
My biggest gripe is that the commentaries don’t have an on/off feature on the menu and in order to turn them off you have to stop the disc and restart, but that’s me being nitpicking really.
I enjoyed the extras and have since watched the film with both the commentaries. They were interesting but not exceptional. My advice is that if you liked the film, buy it on DVD for the picture clarity and sound quality rather than the extras.
Thanks for the gift and the fun time Boy Wonder, maybe we'll do it again some time.
Cheers for reading
Peej
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Ocean's Elevenimproves on 1960's Rat Pack original with supernova casting, a slickly ... more
updated plot and Steven Soderbergh's graceful touch behind the camera. Soderbergh reportedly relished the opportunity "to make a movie that has no desire except to giv...
Postage & Packaging: £1.21 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
Recently paroled con artist Danny Ocean is a man who keeps his cool in situations unlikely ... more
to make any individual comfortable. No sooner does he violate his parole that he's travelling around the country gathering people for his next big schemes: to ro...
Advantages: Brad Pitt, George Clooney -need I say more? Disadvantages: If you're looking for a slick, serious action thriller then you'll be disappointed
chocoholic 08.04.2002 ·
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Ocean's Eleven (DVD)
![Ocean's Eleven [DVD] [2002]](http://picnicb.ciao.com/uk/78534951.jpg "Ocean's Eleven [DVD] [2002]")
Dec 9th, 2002
(Dec 12th, 2002)
very helpful by (100%):
