Ocean’s Eleven Movie Review

Photo: express.co.uk

Ocean’s Eleven is a crime/thriller film directed by Steven Soderbergh and was released in 2001.  The movie was a remake of the 1960 Ocean’s 11.  At the very beginning, main character Danny Ocean (George Clooney) was released from prison and seeks to get right back to his life of crime by robbing three big-time casinos in Las Vegas.  He recognizes he will need a lot of assistance though, so he goes straight to his partner-in-crime Rusty Ryan (Brad Pitt), and the two go around the country rounding up a crew to prepare for the heist.  The crew consists of people with special talents, such as an explosives guru and an acrobat.

Danny Ocean and his eleven collaborators spend much time preparing for the big heist by getting to know all the ins and outs of the casinos and their employees.  As they prepare to take on the mission, the crew learns that Danny has special interest in robbing these casinos because the owner of them is dating his ex-wife whom he still has interest in.  What ensues is an intricate mission to rob the casinos involving Danny and his eleven, where everyone plays a special part.  There are close-calls, deceptions, and swindling all in effort to seize $160,000,000 and get Danny his ex-wife back.

Photo: imdb.com

I just watched this movie for the first time, and after it ended I was asked how I liked it.  My response was that it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t impressive.  To me, it was just “medium.”  The best thing this movie has going for it is the cast.  There are a lot of big names in this movie: George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Bernie Mac, Matt Damon, Andy Garcia, and Julia Roberts.  When you get all those kind of stars together, you have a great start to a movie.  However, the storyline wasn’t that strong to me.  The plot was pretty basic with a heist scheme that has been seen in movies before.  The way the plot was carried out was pretty tame too, with not many action and thrilling parts.  That is not to say it wasn’t interesting.  While it didn’t necessarily suck me in, it wasn’t something I wanted to hurry and end either.  It was very easy to keep up with, and also very predictable.

The simplicity alone wasn’t the issue for me in this movie, it was the fact that it didn’t have anything else to make up for it.  Simple movies can be some of the greatest movies if they have a lot of funny parts or really good action parts to make up for it.  But this movie didn’t really have anything to make up for the simplicity.  The best way I can describe it is it was a B-list script with an A-list cast.  It’s like one of those movies you come across on tv that you’ve never heard of and you watch the whole thing, but don’t really remember much about it a few months later.  Outside of my less-than-impressive review, overall it got a really good critical response and did extremely well in the box office.  So don’t take my word to heart, and go check out the movie for yourself to see if you agree or disagree with me and let me know by commenting below or on twitter.

Rating: 2.5/5

Garett