2001 / 116 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

Rarely does a movie tap so deeply into the very essence of cool so seemingly effortlessly as “Ocean’s Eleven” does. It’s just…cool. From the first frame to the last. It just oozes effortless cool, and it needs to. It’s the sort of movie that must be drenched in cool in order to work effectively. It must wallow in it. It must soak in it. It must exude it even when very little appears to be happening.

Which prompts a question: What is cool? Good question. I sure as hell don’t have an answer to it. I could try to explain it, but that would be an exercise in futility. Cool is simply “cool”. There is no other way to explain it. And when you have seen something “cool”, you know it. You don’t need to be told. And I’m not talking a movie where you see a big explosion that really impresses you, or a great bit of dialogue, which makes your eyes light up and elicits you to say “Cool!” No, true cool is different. True “cool” is a rare commodity, and has little to do with anything to extreme as a big explosion or a twisty plot. No. True cool is simpler, more idiosyncratic than that. True “cool” is an elemental sort of thing. It’s evident in the set of a man’s face. It is evident in the attitude of a character. It is in the way they walk. It is in the way they confront the circumstances in which they find themselves. It simply is. Remember the way that John Travolta walked up that set of stairs in “Get Shorty”? That is what I am talking about. That was “cool”. That’s the sort of “Cool” that “Ocean’s Eleven” has in spades.

George Clooney, for example, is the maestro of cool in this film. He has his motives. He has his doubts and his emotions, we catch a glimmer or shadow of them every so often as they drift over his face. But we don’t catch much of them. He is too cool to be human. Some characters are larger than life. Clooney’s Danny Ocean (a suave and quietly charismatic sort of creation unique to him) is Cooler than Life. Which is not to say that he does not give a good performance. He isn’t Oskar Schindler and he isn’t Lester Burnham, but he is the right man to be the focal point of the film. He exudes the sort of class and respectability and suaveness that makes the whole film click.

But George is not alone as the ambassador of Cool in this film. At his side, behind him, and perhaps even a step ahead of him most of the time, is Brad Pitt. Like Billy Bob Thornton in “The Man Who Wasn’t There”, Brad creates a memorable and understandable (yet teasingly enigmatic) character with the smallest of gestures and a minimum of big emotions. He simply talks, eternally snacks on something, and exudes the same variety of effortless coolness as Clooney. They are remarkable in this picture. No, they are not the average guy. They are the sort of guys that the average guys would all like to be.

“Ocean’s Eleven” is, first and foremost, and pretty much straight up, a heist film. It revolves around the meticulously planned heist of a vault 200 feet beneath Las Vegas (Vegas, baby) which houses the cash from three separate casinos all owned by the same guy (Andy Garcia).

Danny has a grudge against the man, which soon becomes apparent and is eventually explained, and assembles a crew of the best men in order to pull off his daring and complex robbery.

“Ocean’s Eleven” has all the trademarks of a classic heist picture, like “Topkapi”. It has the part where the hero assembles a varied and oddball assortment of players, each with a special ability that will come into play during the course of the heist. Most memorable among these various players are Carl Reiner as a retired master lured back into the frey, Don Cheadle as an explosives expert who looks and sounds like a refugee from the film “Snatch”, Matt Damon as a pickpocket, Elliot Gould as the badly-dressed financier with a perpetual cigar in his mouth, and Bernie Mac as the inside man. These men all give their characters a nice amount of personality and distinguish themselves from one another quite nicely. They aren’t expected to give Oscar quality performances, they are just expected to enliven the pot they have been stirred into. And they do so admirably.

Then there are the other heist picture trademarks, all of which are nicely covered and wonderfully enacted. There’s the part where the leader explains and outlines the plot to his assembled crew. There is the part where they train and acquire the necessary materials. There is the part where complications arise to throw a monkey into the wrench of the whole show. And there is, of course, the big payoff.
There is also the prerequisite love interest. Julia Roberts has little to do but look pretty here.

She could pull this role off in her sleep (though she has more charisma here than she did in the disappointing “America’s Sweethearts” or as the bitch in “The Mexican”) and she occupies the least fascinating facet of the film, but she still does an adequate job. The film’s crackerjack pace does slow a bit during these scenes, but don’t worry. It will soon shift back into gear for the heist segment and the segments which lead to that inevitability.

The manner in which the heist is played out is pretty clever and unique. The performances are enriching. And the whole thing is just a hell of a lot of fun. I can’t think of a movie this year that was more flat out fun (okay, “Moulin Rouge”, but that was a richer experience than simply “fun”) and I can’t think of a heist film other than “Topkapi” which was any better than this one. It’s a brilliant example of what it is. It respects the intelligence of its audience, it provides a glorious dose of pure entertainment, and it’s just more fun than you’re going to have in the theater otherwise.

Plus, and I think I may have mentioned this, it’s pretty damn cool.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 7th, 2001 at 3:42 pm and is filed under Dale's Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.