A Scientist at the Movies Reviews by Greg Paris

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Title: Ocean's 11 (2001)

Theatrical release: 2001

Details:

George Clooney (Daniel Ocean, the idea man)

Matt Damon (Linus Caldwell, the novice)

Brad Pitt (Rusty Ryan, the right-hand man)

Casey Affleck (Virgil Malloy, driver)

Scott Caan (Turk Malloy, driver)

Elliott Gould (Reuben Tishkoff, the backer)

Edward Jemison (Livingston Dell)

Bernie Mac (Frank Catton, the inside man)

Shaobo Qin (Yen, the grease)

Carl Reiner (Saul Bloom)

Joe La Due (Billy Tim Denham)

Andy Garcia (Terry Benedict, the target)

Julia Roberts (Tess Ocean, the wild card)

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Writing credits all date from the 1960 screenplay

Score: +

The Review: An excellent caper flick, well worth watching at least once again after you've seen it develop the first time. It snoops on an attempt to rob not just one, but three Las Vegas casinos, and it has all the classic stages of a good con: selecting a target, assembling the crew, finding a backer, designing the caper, training the crew, and execution. The wild card in this round is Julia Roberts' character, as the ex-wife of Danny Ocean, now taking up with the target of the con.

Amusing and excellent cast of characters, all of whom seemed to have great fun working together -- from the old guard (Gould and Reiner) to the new guard (Pitt and Damon). Clooney is the anchor of the movie and of the caper, as the smugly confident "idea man" with mixed motives for doing the job.

The disturbing "suspension of disbelief" anomaly here is "The Pinch," a van-sized device "borrowed" from a misnamed California research university that purports to emulate the debilitating EMP (electromagnetic pulse) of a nuclear explosion, but without the explosion. The reason they need to resort to such an experimental device is amusing, even if the device itself is fiction (even though there may be a glimmer of scientific basis in the pulsed magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD) power sources, up to 100Mw, developed by Soviet scientists for geophysical sounding of the Earth's magnetic field).

To my fading memory, this entry compares favorably with the original 1960 Ocean's 11 (a rat-pack film with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Joey Bishop, among many others), even though the twist endings are somewhat different, and the tie-that-binds the group (their connection with WW-II service) is also lost. And there's no bouncy theme song ("E-O-11"). Good though.

(6-Jul-02)

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