When remaking films, it makes more sense to pick an old film which wasn’t much to write home about. Steven Soderbergh was guided by this when he decided to make new version of Ocean’s Eleven, popular but not particularly remarkable 1960 heist film. His eponymous 2001 version was enthusiastically greeted by critics and audience and turned into one of the rare Hollywood remakes better than the original.
The plot begins when professional criminal Danny Ocean (played by George Clooney) leaves New Jersey prison and immediately violates parole by visiting his friend and old partner Rusty Ryan (played by Brad Pitt) where they, together with old businessman and former casino owner Reuben Tishkoff (played by Elliott Gould) make a plan of conducting spectacular casino robbery in Las Vegas. Targets are three casinos owned by Tishkoff’s rival Terry Benedict (played by Andy Garcia). Ocean is further motivated to conduct the heist after learning that his ex wife Tess (played by Julia Roberts) is currently having relationship with Benedict. Ocean and Rusty add nine more specialists to the team that would plan and extensively prepare very complicated and risky heist that include major diversion and deception in order to rob three casinos simultaneously.
Soderbergh, who is considered to be one of the most respected American film makers, is known for great diversity of his filmography, which allowed him to earn respect of critics by his art films while at the same time wooing general public with his more commercially oriented work. Ocean’s Eleven clearly belongs to the latter and represents one of his more light-hearted and humorous films. The original 1960 version was less of a film and more of an excuse for Frank Sinatra and his Rat Pack friends to party in Las Vegas during location shooting. So, Soderbergh with his great talent had relatively easy task of doing something better. The script by Ted Griffin is much tighter, characters, played by some of the greatest Hollywood stars of the time, are much better defined and Soderbergh doesn’t bother with music numbers. The result is a film which is funny and exciting, despite its rather predictable plot. Ocean’s Eleven is, however, far from perfect. Soderbergh’s cinematography is at times too dark and much at odds with Las Vegas glamour. Don Cheadle in the role of explosives expert Basher Tarr delivers unintentional comedy with his attempt at Cockney accent which was later source of controversy. Despite those flaws, Ocean’s Eleven easily won audience leading to impressive box office results and two sequels – Ocean’s Twelve in 2004 and Ocean’s Thirteen in 2007.
RATING: 6/10 (++)
Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ Leofinance blog https://leofinance.io/@drax.leo
Unstoppable Domains: https://unstoppabledomains.com/?ref=3fc23fc42c1b417 Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax Bitcoin Lightning HIVE donations: https://v4v.app/v1/lnurlp/qrcode/drax Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e
BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7
