Counter to many expectations, the lazy, self-indulgent Rat Pack flick that Frank Sinatra let director Lewis Milestone make back in 1960 has been turned into a lazy, self-indulgent Team Hollywood flick by Steven Soderbergh. Same leaky ship, just a different bunch of rats.
Soderbergh went into the exercise batting a thousand as an art-house director (The Limey) who had proved he could produce blockbusters (Erin Brockovich and Traffic in one year) on just about any theme, so he had little if anything to prove with Ocean’s Eleven. Frankly, he could surpass the meandering 1960 version just by showing up for work. And he does surpass it, but not by much.
Las Vegas has got to be one of the most adrenalized cities in the world – 24 hours a day, no clocks, free table drinks, oxygen supposedly pumped into the air conditioning systems – so it is odd that Soderbergh never manages to quite capture this on film, although he does avoid making his movie less of a Chamber of Commerce travelogue than Milestone did.
But a handful of illogical pinpricks gradually let the air of the whole balloon. The Rat Pack came pre-sold as a package – a gestalt, if you will – while Soderbergh’s cast is simply a collection of heavyhitters (George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, Matt Damon), each of whom appears on-screen toting particular celebrity baggage. Most of the eleven characters they play don’t know one another and yet are about to place their fates in each other’s hands. Worse, Soderbergh is in such a hurry to get to the heist that he barely tells us who’s who. As to the heist, we (and they) are told that the vault holding the proceeds of the three casinos run by mean old Andy Garcia bristles with more security than a nuclear missile silo, and then Ocean and the lads proceed to take it down as if they are knocking over a 7-Eleven. Suspenseful? Hardly. Entertaining? Well, there are a few funny lines, but, jeez, you’d expect that.
It is always a bit irritating when the actors on stage seem to be having more fun than us ticket-buying folks in the bleachers, and that’s the case here. When not maintaining a dry-martini patter, Clooney and Pitt perpetually seem to be sharing a private joke, as does Elliot Gould, who plays the gang’s moneyman.
The exception is Roberts, who stomps around with a scowl on her face for most of the movie. The script provides reasons for this, but that doesn’t make them fun to watch. When you’ve got Julia Roberts in Vegas, her smile should be brighter than the neon on the Strip.