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Ocean's Eleven (Full Screen Edition)

Ocean's Eleven (Full Screen Edition)

List Price: $14.96
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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Unexpectedly boring
Review: From what I hear, men typically like films filled with violence, especially violence directed towards women, children, and the elderly. This isn't a violent film at all, making one wonder why it was so popular when released as last summer's guy-flick. Maybe what men really like is to pay $$ to see a movie and then sit there bored to death? I was expecting something fantastic, however, due to the hype. This film, though, is boring at the beginning, boring in the middle, and it does get a little exciting later on, but then it ends . . . From what I can tell, the tone of the film is taken from George Clooney's dull monotone as he speaks his lines. Dull becomes the whole perspective. The first third of the film is spent on Clooney assembling his team for his assault on three Las Vegas casinos with his dull, rasping voice talking and talking and his trademark half-grins and smirks and rolling of the head to substitute for acting. Remember how much fun it was when Paul Newman got together his team of cons in The Sting? Well, in Ocean's 11, you'll want to take a nap. It's just boring. The supporting actors don't seem to make much effort at establishing their characters, preferring just to rush on camera and throw out their lines. There are so many of them, too, that the film has no time to set them up as better than cardboard characters. Playing second lead is Brad Pitt, who is a blessing to the film since he brings cohesion and skill to his role. On the other hand, he takes his signals from Clooney and thus dampens down his character to fit into the monotone, thus all is boring once again. The second third, they are planning their caper without giving you much detail and then they are in Las Vegas. The love interest enters then, in the form of Clooney's ex-wife played by Julia Roberts. What's nice is that Julia does not use her trademark horse laugh in any scene -- although if you miss it, she does it again and again in the "Making of" documentary on the DVD. This is a departure for her, not only in the brevity of the role but also in the seriousness of it, and she does a good job of downplaying her character to match Clooney's dullness. On the other hand, though she and Clooney have chemistry, she's miscast. Clooney is a lot prettier than she is. And the director is unkind, shooting Robert's face at some very unflattering angles. In one scene, she looks like a space-alien from Star Trek. Not nice. Too much attention is paid to the sets in Las Vegas and the costuming as well as to trivial antics, too little to the story. What happens seems thrown together, with no explanation of what is going on or no flow from one scene to the other. The actual heist is not all that clever -- any good security cop would have gotten suspicious and nixed it. Andy Garcia does a good job as the menacing good/bad guy, but then he's often overdressed and under represented, being given all the good lines but not having that many lines or many scenes on camera. All in all, this film seems to be too ambitious for its timeframe. Given a good eight hours, the writer and director might have made it more interesting -- giving us fleshed out characters, understandable and coherent situations, and some real tension. George Clooney may have been convinced to be lively rather than dull. Or they may have been wise and made Brad Pitt the star!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Overrated and uninspiring
Review: While packed with some of today's movie "superstars," this film is hugely disappointing with lackluster performances by nearly every actor in the film. The only thing this film has in common with the original Rat Pack movie is its title and location: Las Vegas. At least the original had some guts and some interesting characters in the "ll." All I can say about Clooney and Co. is boring, boring, boring.

How George Clooney continues to get jobs as an actor escapes me. He never seems to be able to capture a character. The viewer always has the sense that he is merely an actor reading some lines - and not doing a very good job of it. His (Ocean's) obsession with ex-wife, Tess, (portrayed lamely by Julia Roberts) is never fully understood. Tess is a dull museum curator who has gone from her marriage to con-man Ocean to an unfulfilling relationship with a multimillionaire casino owner played by Andy Garcia. What either of these men finds appealing about Tess is never made clear to the audience.

Even Brad Pitt and Matt Damon, who can usually be counted on for stellar acting performances, only put forth a C+ effort. Elliott Gould's performance is more appropriate for a Saturday Night Live sketch. The only actor worthy of any positive comment regarding his performance in this disaster is Carl Reiner.

The story line is hugely predictable, a hybrid of Entrapment and Mission Impossible. Get the floor plans, build a facsimile casino vault, pull the heist, dupe the casino, make off with the money. The bad guys win.

If you're looking for two-hours of no-mind entertainment, this might be the movie for you. But it will certainly not be one that you'll want to tell your friends to see.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Ultra Cool Entertainment!
Review: Ocean's Eleven is a movie that's almost to cool for itself- to figure this out, you just have to look at the cast list:

George Clooney
Brad Pitt
Julia Roberts
Matt Damon
Andy Garcia
Don Cheadle
Bernie Mac

Now, come on, that's impressive. Plus, Ocean's Eleven has another thing going for it- a great plot. It's an amazingly cool and complex tale of a man on parole who gets 10 men together and attempts to pull off a heist on three casinos. This movie made me laugh and worry and wonder. The plot is suprisingly complicated, so I wouldn't take anyone under 12. If you haven't yet, watch Ocean's Eleven!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Wonderful
Review: It was unlike anything I expected. Like many people, I had heard it was either great or terrible. My father rented it and asked me to join him so I went hesistantly. After just a few minutes, I was into the movie and captivated by just about every part of it. It kept me interested all the way through and even after the movie I had to think about what had just happened. I would recommend it to anyone.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: "Are You In Or Out?" For This "Ocean's Eleven", You're In!
Review: The 2001 release of Ocean's Eleven, produced by Jerry Weintrab and directed by Steven Soderbergh, is best described as a total makeover rather than a remake of the original 1960 release starring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis, Jr. Other than the title character of Danny Ocean and a plan to rob a group of Las Vegas casinos with eleven people, very little of the original 1960 screenplay makes it into this version. That said however, this effort produced a far more entertaining film than its namesake.

In this outing, Danny Ocean, played by George Clooney, is an ex-con, who with buddy Rusty Ryan (Brad Pitt) plans to rob three Las Vegas casinos, all of which share a single undeground vault, and are all owned by one Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia). But Ocean has another reason to chose Benedict as his target. Danny's ex-wife Tess (Julia Roberts) is now with Benedict and he wishes to win her back. Danny and Rusty spend a few scenes recruiting a team of criminal specialists, (Matt Damon, Bernie Mac, Carl Reiner, Elliot Gould, Casey Affleck, Scott Caan, Edward Jemison, Don Cheadle, Shaobo Qin) then they get down to the planning and setting into motion the crime of the century. The fun of this movie is watching how can the eleven successfully rob Benedict's vault and whether Danny might somehow win back his girl.

Although there are a few sight gags that harken back to the original Ocean's Eleven (the house of cards on the diving board is one), the screenwriter Ted Griffin appears to get much of his inspiration from at least two other heist/con movies, 1973's "The Sting" starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford, and 1978's "The Great Train Robbery" written and directed by Michael Crichton and starring Sean Connery and Donald Sutherland (both of which are great movies by the way and available on DVD.) Several scenes in Ocean's Eleven appear to refer to these two earlier films (Danny's inital meeting with the pickpocket Linus Caldwell, played by Matt Damon, echoes the initial meeting between Connery and Sutherland in their film right down to the complementary "Nice pull!!") as well as much of the build up toward the heist and the characterization of Terry Benedict. Just as importantly, much of the humor of these two films as rubbed off onto this screenplay.

In fact, this version of Ocean's Eleven succeeds at what the original intended to do but often times failed, it really looks like a movie where the characters are having a good time, and the audience is invited to come along. The screenplay is not perfect, the scenes with Danny and Tess do not seem to blend into the story as well as it could, one sometimes wonders whether this subplot is really necessary. Some may not like the way the movie ends. However, the general plotline is excellent, the acting is first-rate and most audiences should enjoy this movie.

The reviewer screened the widescreen DVD of Ocean's Eleven, which has an excellent print that displays very well on a large widescreen television screen. It has five audio tracks (two English, one French, and two commentary) and a couple of "Making of..." documentaries that are of the usual variety.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: George Clooney and Brad Pitt bring heists to a new level
Review: George Clooney and Brad Pitt are an awesome duo. It's sooooo cool when they gather all of the heist members together. The whole heist is kinda hard to understand at first but I got it at the end. This is a movie for anyone. It's ggrrrrreeat!!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: 11 Great Actors...
Review: This is the story of 11 great actors coming together to make one beautifully made movie! The story has twists and turns and an ending you'd never expect! Steven Soderbergh is top-notch, right up there with Steven Spielberg! I'm not going to explain the plot, and I'm not going to babble on anymore about how great it is, so just see it!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Ocean's Eleven - a good reuse of the title
Review: Ok, George Clooney as Sinatra's Danny Ocean is a bit of a stretch but that really is only the similarity. While the original is full of legends from the past, this remake contains our generations future legends - Julia Roberts, Clooney, Pitts /etc are probably destined for that same mantra. On the whole of the movie, it was excellent. Not to be compared to the original by purists....4 Bellagio fountains as a rating out of 5

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: ocean does it again! C+ entertainment
Review: Trying to pull off a heist in Vegas is impossible, but this is a movie. The ending is a little surprising, although, it could have been edited better... Although, the all-star cast gell together and this movie is fun to watch. None of it is really believable but it is still a fun movie to rent. They could have replaced Julia Roberts with a sexier vixen, like Salma Hayek to make it a little more interesting, but the casting director was trying to get all of the biggest names when they made this movie. Roberts performance is passive in this flick.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: In any other town, they'd be the bad guys.
Review: I saw Ocean's Eleven only recently, and I was completely blown away by it. Only a few scenes in, I told myself that I must own a copy of this movie, and everything I saw after that only reinforced that conviction

But I'm more than a little baffled by all of the negative reviews people have posted here. Having read maybe half of them, I have one thing I'd really like to say to everyone who's coming to give this movie a low rating because the plot is thin, shallow and/or unbelievable:

THIS IS A CAPER MOVIE.

The joy of a caper movie is watching the characters' plan take one wild turn after another, a tangled network of nifty gadgets, daring near-misses, hair-trigger timing, and ballsy cons, all the while slinging one-liners and picking fights with the villain and/or each other. There's no point in watching a caper movie for its deep, thoughtful, realistic plot, because it doesn't have one. What it has is style, wit, flash and sparkle, easygoing camaraderie, a sense of glorious immaturity in its thrills, and the sort of sharp left turns that, if you're in the proper spirit of the thing, should have you sitting straight up in your chair yelling gleefully at the screen, "NO WAY!"

Ocean's Eleven has that. The heist plan loops in and out and around itself so many times expressly to allow for multiple fake-outs and to keep the watcher guessing. The whole point of the movie is to have some fun. The cast certainly seems to have done so. With the exception of Julia Roberts, who spends the entire movie seeming stilted and tense, all of the actors contribute to the movie's charisma. On the DVD's actor commentary from Andy Garcia, Matt Damon, and Brad Pitt, they say that the movie was very laid-back, easy, and fun to film, and it certainly seems that way to watch it.

The rest of the complaints, dealing mostly with pacing and dialogue, seem a matter of taste. Personally, I loved the dialogue, which was frequently delivered with such deadpan wit that what the characters *said* takes you by surprise. I dig the sort of sense of humor that comes up with lines like "They've got enough armed security to occupy Paris!--Okay, bad example," makes Chinese acrobat Yan's single English line "Where the **** you been?", and lets Don Cheadle's character speak in Cockney rhyming slang.

If you want a deep movie, see a drama. Ocean's Eleven is a heist flick; it's all about audacity and flair, and it's got that in spades.


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