Clooney’s Danny Ocean sets the wheel in motion the moment he leaves prison.

(This has been reduced to three in the new movie, and really only one vault.) That earlier film was mostly an exercise in celebrity cool here Soderbergh makes his actors earn their money by actually playing characters.Įveryone is a career criminal in Ted Griffin’s intricate, richly detailed script, so not one moment is wasted on worry over a dishonest day’s work. The movie, of course, has an antecedent in the 1960 Ocean’s Eleven, in which Frank Sinatra and his Rat Pack buddies rob five Vegas casinos. The film could be a major hit both in North America and overseas. If kids have Harry Potter this holiday season, then adults have Ocean’s Eleven. Each star gets his moment to shine, so fans will suffer no disappointment. But at times it feels so weightless that the intrigue comes more in seeing how the writer and director will wiggle out of plot predicaments than how a team of thieves will rip off Las Vegas casinos.įor Steven Soderbergh, coming off last year’s historic double whammy in which he became the only director to have two films nominated for best picture and best director, Ocean’s Eleven represents a mostly successful stylistic shift into sheer artifice, where the force of the personalities involved compels your interest. It’s a movie that demands not to be taken too seriously. The Hollywood Reporter’s original review is below:Ī heist movie with a serious demeanor but comic underpinnings, Ocean’s Eleven performs its grand larceny through a collection of star turns by the likes of George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, Matt Damon, Don Cheadle and Andy Garcia.

unleashed the George Clooney-Brad Pitt version of Ocean’s Eleven, which would kick-start a franchise of star-studded heist films.

Ocean's 11 1960 casinos