Hmmmmm. Do you remember Mars Attacks! back in 1996? It had a bunch of movie stars lining up to be in it, and then most of them appeared in it (Jack Nicholson, Pierce Brosnan, Michael J. Fox, Glenn Close, Annette Bening, Sarah Jessica Parker, and more). That film also had a big name director in Tim Burton (Planet of the Apes, a couple of Batman movies, and a whole lot more) who had recently made Ed Wood, an Oscar winning film. Well I do, and the whole thing wasn’t much of a success. Now skip ahead half a decade and you have this new film starring a bunch of big name actors that are being directed by a big name director that is fresh from directing Oscar winning films. Hmmmmm. Will history repeat itself?

The film begins with Daniel Ocean (George Clooney from O’ Brother Where Art Thou?) being getting paroled from the New Jersey penal system. Dan then promptly heads to Atlantic City to pays a visit to his pal Frank (Bernie Mac) in order to set his latest scheme (which we shall get to in a little bit) in motion. Mr. Ocean’s incarceration was due to convictions surrounding his con artist ways, but he blames it on his wife leaving him. Next step in the plan is to head for LA and recruit Dusty Ryan (Brad Pitt, The Fight Club) for the big score. With Ryan on board, the two go to secure financing for the job from a former casino owner Ruben Tischkoff (Elliot Gould). The two are able to get the money from Ruben only because they are going to hit the vault that stores the money for three casinos owned by Harry Benedict (Andy Garcia), whom Ruben seeks revenge upon for muscling him out of his casino. Now with financing the team sets out to recruit the rest of their crew. They get a very limber and small Chinese acrobat (Shaobo Qin), Roscoe Means (Don Cheadle, Traffic) an explosives expert, a master pickpocket in Linus Caldwell (Matt Damon, Dogma & The Talented Mr. Ripley), Virgil (Casey Affleck, 200 Cigarettes) & Turk Malloy (Scott Caan, Boiler Room), old fart Saul (Carl Reiner), and their tech/geek guy Livingston (Edward Jemison). So there are eleven co-conspirators, thus the name of the film, Ocean’s Eleven. Meanwhile Dan is also plotting to get his wife back, who just happens to be dating Mr. Benedict. So Dan simply re-introduces himself to Tess (Julia Roberts, The Mexican) in order to make Benedict jealous, but it seems that Tess wants nothing to do with Dan. Back to the heist portion where everyone is getting ready for the big day, which is going to be the day of a big boxing match at the Bellagio (Heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis vs. some nobody). They pick this night because according to the movie the Nevada State Gaming Commission requires each casino to have enough cash on hand to pay out on every chip they have at the casino, which means there should be about $160 million on hand that night. Of course there are mishaps and problems to lend some suspense, but the night finally comes and its action time, with the big questions remaining of will they pull it off and will Dan get Tess back?

As you may already know, the film is a remake of a Rat Pack film from 1960 by the same title so writing credits still go to George Clayton Johnson and Jack Golden Russell. A couple other people in the film are Frankie Allison, Robin Sachs, Scott L. Schwartz, William Johnson, and Frank Patton.

The acting and action were just fine, and there was a fair amount of suspense. However it just seems far too unlikely for anything like this to happen in the real world, so plausibility is a bit of a problem. But over all a good film that is entertaining and even funny. For the rating I give it eight couches out of the usual ten. Later.

Last updated: Saturday, October 28, 2006 05:37:38 PM

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