Intro
Ocean's Eleven (2001)
This is not a fair film for me to grade. I have seen this movie many, many times. Sometimes, when I have trouble sleeping, I'll put on a movie I love and the comfort of watching it somehow allows me to fall asleep faster than otherwise. Ocean's Eleven has been that movie in the past for me. (There's been a few though the only other one to immediately come to mind is Pulp Fiction). It's a very fun movie that I wish I could watch for the first time again.
But alas, here I am, watching it with a more critical eye, doing exactly the thing I'd be content with never doing. It's still a movie I would stop and watch if I ever found it channel surfing. (Although oddly enough, that's never happened to me even though this seems like it should be an overplayed movie). So critical me has not ruined the movie for me thankfully.
It did however make me think I was probably wrong with calling this movie obviously worse than Out of Sight. I don't think I said that in so many words, but it's definitely implied in my review of Out of Sight. Trying to look at this movie from a more objective point of view, I'm not entirely sure it is better anymore. I unfortunately watched Out of Sight four years ago, so I don't remember that movie well enough to compare the two.
There's a couple flaws that I noticed upon a rewatch. The first and biggest is Tess as a character, and by that I mean she's not a character. It's not clear why she's with Terry Benedict for starters. The movie is so focused on making Benedict a villain, it forget to give any compelling reason whatsoever why anyone would choose to date him and the reasons that one can come up would make Tess a very shallow character, which I do not think is the movie's intention.
When she chooses to be with Danny, they didn't really do any work to make it seem like that'd be something to do. Leave Benedict? Oh sure, they provided enough reasons well before the deciding blow, but leaving one boyfriend does not mean you need to instantly be with an ex-boyfriend. You are allowed to be single.
Secondly, and this may somewhat be a function of what type of movie this is, but hiding Danny being in on the plan to join Matt Damon's character was dumb. Not to hide it from us, but to hide it from Damon. There's no reason why he shouldn't know that he's being joined in the theft. I know a good heist movie has to have a sleight of hand towards its audience, but it doesn't need to fool the characters themselves too.
The rest of the flaws are basically nitpicks. Or least not stuff I necessarily noticed the first 10 times I watched the movie. So the suspension of disbelief required to believe they could pull off this heist was essentially effective for me. Yeah if you study the movie, you'll notice some things I won't mention, but I don't think most people really thought about the plot holes the first or second times they watched it.
Which goes back to it being unfair to review this film objectively for me. As I watched this several times when I was quite a bit younger, I was more easily fooled presumably by the movie's tricks, whereas I have no idea if I would have noticed the plot holes my first time watching now. Nonetheless, you have to expect plot holes for heist films. It just comes with the territory.
Ocean's Eleven is just about the peak of popcorn blockbuster for me. Which may be confusing because I'm not giving it a perfect score, but I doubt anyone who watches this will come out of it unhappy. Everyone has a good time watching this, and I believe that's ultimately what Soderbergh was trying to do, not make "high art."
3/4 stars
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