Back in 2001, Steven Soderbergh and a team of Hollywood elites performed a stunning act of grand theft remake when painfully stylish heist remake Ocean’s Eleven proved to be one of the coolest movies of the decade. Not only did it obliterate the admittedly dull, Rat Pack starring original, it confirmed that it’s director was adept at box office hoovering blockbusters just as much as he was at drama (Erin Brockovich), thrillers (Out Of Sight) and delving into cutting looks at world politics (Traffic). This meant, the fact that a sequel ultimately reared it’s head a few years later proved to be about as shocking as George Clooney opting to sell Nespresso machine – read: not at all.
However, despite Soderbergh confidently nailing the nuances of a remake with chutzpah to spare, how would he deal with the issues inherent to making a sequel? Would Danny Ocean’s conglomerate of kooky criminals manage to pull off another theft of audience’s hearts, or would Ocean’s Twelve be too unwieldy a number to balance?
Years after “Ocean’s Eleven” successfully pulled of an ambitious heist that saw $160 million stolen from Terry Benedict’s Las Vegas casinos, the extraordinarily intimidating man visits each of the members one by one to offer them an ultimatum: pay back the money they stole, plus $38 million in intrest, in two weeks or either be arrested or killed. Gathering in an understandable state of panic, the eleven pool their remaining funds to discover they’re still short by half the total amount – so obviously to make up the remaining number, the gang starts frantically looking up heist opportunities that’ll get them paid fast.
To avoid issues with U.S. authorities, Danny and his not-so merry men settle on pulling a score in Amsterdam that sees them targeting the first stock certificate ever issued. However, various speed bumps and road blocks soon start impeding their progress as matter grow ever more complex. While Danny is locked in on getting the job done, Rusty’s old flame resurfaces which is terrible timing when you realise she’s a detective for Europol dedicated to solving crimes just like these. Making matters worse is the interference of gentleman thief “The Night Fox”, who has decided to target Danny simply because his ego wants to discover who is the better crook. If all this wasn’t distracting enough, Linus keeps pestering Danny and Rusty to have more control in the gang, Saul has no interest in playing such high-risk games and mid-mission, acrobat Yen is accidently misplaced.
With the deadline approaching and double and triple crosses happening all over the place, the Night Fox throws Danny a lifeline in the form of a competition: steal a certain Fabergé egg before him and he’ll pay off Benedict’s debt. Can the gang drag themselves out of their slump and rise to the occasion once more?
While watching this film, there’s a feeling that Soderbergh – ever the maverick – is making a completely different film to the one that we think we’re supposed to be watching and in many ways, it ensures that Ocean’s Twelve ends up being an utterly different experience depending upon how you choose watch it. For example, if you were to take the movie on purely a surface level, it does all the expected things a sequel does as in it ups the threat (Andy Garcia’s back, and he’s pissed), doubles the villains (Vincent Cassel’s egotistical Night Fox) and expands the gang by letting Julia Roberts in on the fun as that twelfth member and introducing Catherine Zeta Jones’ Europol agent to spice things up even further. The film even goes “darker” by having the core team playing defence thanks to the villains constantly setting and resetting the terms which ultimately leads to multiple heists to dance to that “bigger and better” fife that all follow ups believe they have to follow. However, while Ocean’s Twelve is undeniably bigger and loaded with random cameos besides, I would strong hesitate to claim it better because Soderbergh seems to be make some classic mistakes.
For a start, with much more chips on the table, some of the original crew instantly have to take a back seat to everything else. Neither Bernie Mac, Elliot Gould or Don Cheadle and that fucking cockney accent have a single memorable moment in the entire movie and other members, such as Carl Reiner and Qin Shaobo spend a lot of the story missing completely as the script furiously comes up with ways to cut the team off at the knees. In fact, none of the team do anything worthwhile at all unless their names are unsurprisingly George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon – and even then they seem like slightly faded photocopies of themselves. The chemistry is still there and the trio still corner the market in zippy back and forth, especially during the downtime between scuppered heists, but it all feels diminished somehow, like everyone just showed up to dress nice and fool around like a far classier Adam Sandler film.
However, while I’m in no way comparing Ocean’s Twelve to Grown Ups 2, the film does tend to veer between audacious plot twists (Julia Roberts’ Tess has to try and pass as… Julia Roberts) and a crazed Rubik’s Cube of a plot that seems design to be deliberately impossible to follow and the result was plenty of audiences feeling like Ocean was a little washed up. However, when it comes to a good heist movie, nothing is never what it seems and if we were to look at things from a slightly different perspective, we find that Soderbergh seems to be using the film to deconstruct the nature of sequels themselves. The overindulgence, the expansion and the curious nature of having the cast get swamped by the abundance of plot all seems weirdly engineered to fully make fun of sequels being inferior – hell, even the skills of Ocean’s gang gave been nerfed to make them plainly not as good as they once were in a form of meta commentary you’re only going to get if you’re willing to embrace the joke. It’s a ballsy move, but regrettably it’s not an entirely successful one and the onslaught of cameos (Eddie Izzard! Robbie Coltrane! Bruce Willis as himself!) and reality breaking jokes (the Julia Roberts scam is nowhere near as funny as it should be) are a poor substitute for the effortless cool the original made it’s own. While I’m glad Soderbergh didn’t waste his time crafting a more traditional sequel, what he did deliver sadly seems to have pulled the long con on no-one but itself and because of all it’s knowing tricks and self referencing attitude, only succeed in making Ocean’s Twelve far too smart for its own good.
Treating the audience as more of a mark than one of the team, Ocean’s Twelve finds that a lot of its jokes went over the head of those who just wanted a good, sexy heist movie. However, the tidal wave of cameos and a plot that was impossible to follow by design simply ends up bamboozling, when it should exhilarate and only the charm of George, Brad and Matt can keep us invested until Soderbergh’s ambitious master plan reveals itself a buck short and a day late.
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