Ocean's Twelve

I was happy to see a second movie following Danny Ocean and his gang. Ocean’s Twelve may not have approached the quality of the first movie, but it still is a fun couple of hours. The cast is obviously having a good time and that chemistry flies off the screen. And worse case scenario is that the faults of the second movie encouraged everyone to make a tighter third chapter.

I will never complain when these guys find a reason to get the band back together. Of course they all know just how much chemistry they have with each other so each scene becomes almost a competition. Once again, George Clooney and Brad Pitt are just sailing in their roles. The two of them are so effortless that it seems like they just turned the cameras on while they walked around Europe. The train platform scene may be the best in the entire film; Pitt’s mysterious line, Clooney asking if he looks 50, we got a bagman, its all good stuff. Beyond that great scenes, the two of them get plenty of time to just bounce dialogue off each other. These are the scenes that make the move, screw the plot. Besides the top 2 names, Matt Damon starts climbing the ladder this time around. This is describes best when Julia Roberts calls him “Linus Caldwell Junior Varsity.” Plus his mom frees him from jail. Unlike the first film, some of the crew does get lost in the shuffle. Bernie Mac and Carl Reiner are hurt the most; both of them disappear for extended periods of time. The big name brought to the table was Catherine Zeta-Jones. It does seem like the time that the other members of the crew lost in this movie could be found when the camera was on her. She didn’t do anything wrong but her storyline did screw with the Ocean’s Eleven formula. The other introductions were of Eddie Izzard and Vincent Cassel. I have always been a fan of Izzard and he gets to deliver some great lines. As for Cassel, he plays an eccentric French thief who likes to break-dance. What more do you want? Me? I still want Andy Garcia’s wardrobe.

The main defect of Ocean’s Twelve was the thin nature of the plot. There may have been pieces of Ocean’s Eleven that were hard to believe but you could follow what was happening. I can’t say as much for Ocean’s Twelve. It wasn’t incomprehensible by any means. Still the main story was all over the map and seemed to just exist so the crew could gallivant across Europe. And also to nitpick, the timeline isn’t all that clear. Rusty seemed to be shadowing Isabel before he and Danny met with LaMarque. But that would make no sense since Rusty didn’t know that he would need her to arrest the lot of them until after meeting her father. Plus the whole Julia Roberts as Tess pretending to be Julia Roberts may have been a cute idea on paper, but it fell flat when on the big screen. None of these complaints were enough to ruin the movie, but they were just enough to bring it down a couple of notches.

Ocean’s Twelve is the weakest of the trilogy but that in no way means it should be ignored. There is plenty of good here for everyone to enjoy. Clooney and Pitt could play these characters forever and it would not get old. Plus this one had the better Topher Grace cameo. For that alone this movie deserves praise.

7 out of 10