Oceans 12
Terry Benedict returns to the life of Danny Ocean and Tess – now happily re-married. He wants his money back (PLUS INTEREST) from the “Oceans Eleven”.
So they plan to steal a priceless Faberge Egg, and find themselves entangled with a master criminal.
Direction
Steven Soderberg returns to direct, and while some of his signatures are present (quick cuts on same scene), some new ones are sound (AMSTERDAM having a different letter different scene).
In some scenes the music/score overpowers dialogue, so this should have been better done.
Cast/Characters
Returning of course are the “Oceans Eleven”.
New cast members are Catherine Zeta Jones as Isabel Lahiri, a Europol agent, and former love interest of Rusty.
Vincent Cassell as François Toulour, the master thief the 11 are up against.
Albert Finney has a brief un-billed cameo at the end of the film.
Breakdown
For some reason… this exists… so here we go…
I didn’t care for this one bit.
Terry’s reintroducing the “Oceans Eleven” (more on that in a minute) is supposed to be written as humorous (Basher’s F bomb expletive deleted etc) but it comes across arrogant and overdone.
Terry calls the team the “oceans eleven” which the ‘eleven’ all complain about the name. This is supposed to have been very meta – but once again, it was done inorganically and fairly painful to watch.
There are a few other moments of painful dialogue that was written to be funny or quirky – but just came across dumb, (Danny is 42, Rusty’s tattoos), and the Rusty eating joke becomes old very quickly. It felt like it was just included to pad the run time.
Tess, who was almost an antagonist towards Danny in the first film (up until the final few minutes) becomes an almost smitten school girl here. Why have Julia Roberts in your film if you don’t let her be a Julia Roberts character. Speaking of which… the “Julia Roberts” arc is bizarre and once again, trying to be meta but fails. At least it gives us a pre-Bruce Willis illness cameo. This just messes up any character development she should have had.
Linus too feels like he is written as if he has gotten younger, not three years older (begging to manage more, and the meeting with Robbie Coltrane’s Matsui. Also, if the audience isn’t in on the joke, don’t make it a joke – because we were right there with Linus wondering what the f***.
The inclusion of Catherine Zeta Jones is an interesting choice, as she is Rusty’s ex girlfriend.
She is trying to locate the master criminal Night Fox – who is playing against Danny’s group… and he was trained by the best thief on the planet Gaspar LeMarque… who turns out to be be her dad (because that’s exactly what this film needed…) sigh.
Also, why call this a heist movie when there is no real heist!
Overall
There is still another sequel to go. Yikes!
1/5