Ocean’s Twelve robs the audience

by matthew webber

There’s a moment in most heist films when someone gets snookered. A partner gets backstabbed. A con cons a con.

In Ocean’s Twelve, viewers are the mark. Returning director Steven Soderbergh and the capital M and S Movie Stars – George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, and Julia Roberts among them – play us like fools with easily parted money. The characters don’t just rob some of Europe’s prettiest vistas, they steal our two hours. Ocean’s Twelve looks good: flashy, sexy, cool. But beneath its veneer is a hollow, wooden mess.

Something exciting happens in Ocean’s Twelve, of this much I am sure. What this something is is a discombobulation: of camera angles, music, actors’ toothy mugs. The plot – something about casino mogul Andy Garcia’s wanting his money back and rounding up the original suspects one by one – never makes any sense. You’re the target audience only if you watch Ocean’s Eleven immediately beforehand and you don’t require any Admiral Stockdale-style exposition: Who are these characters and what are they doing here? Forget about suspending your disbelief; suspending the math geek/tuba player would be easier.

Or else you’re the target audience if you’re one of the actors themselves. Supposedly, the shoot was a blast. Too bad the vast majority of the in-jokes fall flat. For just a sampling, Topher Grace and Bruce Willis play cameos of themselves, and Julia Roberts plays someone who looks like Julia Roberts. Hilarious, right? Well, only occasionally.

There’s nothing un-cooler than trying too hard to be cool. The first movie (or, the 2001 remake of the 1960 Rat Pack movie), succeeded in doing what it set out to do – mainly, be the Coolest Movie of All Time – because of how effortless it all seemed. This time out, the coolness is forced, kind of like your dad saying Eminem is dope.

Soderbergh uses every camera trick he ever saw in an “influence” to alert us to the fact that each actor is starring in his own movie. Here he is zooming in on each of the twelve before stopping to frame them like religious icons. There he is casing a joint with Steadicams and dollies. Oops, there’s even a jump cut. The soundtrack is replete with trip-hoppy trumpets. In every shot, the clothes look like they were tailored that morning.

The effect is impeccable, unassailable hipness. Sure, Ocean’s Twelve is cooler than the frost on my car. But without the first film’s plot that unfolded like a winning poker hand, it’s more of a snark tale than something incredible.

It’s a tale sold to idiots, full of Pitt and Clooney, signifying something: the sound of one production company laughing.

Issue 29, December 2004