Movie Review: 'Ocean's Eleven'

The most star-studded movie to come out this season is Ocean's Eleven. This movie has a cast that would make any studio drool and includes: George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Andy Garcia, Julia Roberts, Don Cheadle, Scott Caan, Bernie Mac, Casey Affleck, Elliott Gould and director Steven Soderbergh.

Here's the premise: Danny Ocean (George Clooney) is just released from jail when he decides to rob three Las Vegas casinos: MGM, Bellagio and the Mirage. These casinos are owned by one of the richest men in Las Vegas, Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia) and are attached by an underground vault near the Bellagio where Benedict keeps his money. Danny Ocean wants to break into this vault and steal its millions.

You can imagine robbing a Las Vegas casino vault is a daunting task, so Ocean recruits his old time friend and co-worker, Rusty Ryan (Brad Pitt) to help him out. Rusty is bored teaching young and rich actors/actresses how to play poker, so when Ocean asks him to participate in the heist he agrees. Ryan takes Ocean's ideas and forms them into feasible plans. He's the thinker. He's the one that takes every job and determines how it will work and what problems could arise.

Ocean and Ryan come up with a gem of a plan and begin looking for top specialists in certain fields to carry it out: a pickpocket (Matt Damon), two getaway drivers (Casey Affleck & Scott Caan), an explosives expert (Don Cheadle), a financial backer (Elliot Gould), an inside man (Bernie Mac), a con artist (Carl Reiner), an audio/visual specialist (Edward Jemison), and the grease-man (Shaobo Qin).

Each of these men is putting their lives and reputations in danger in order to pull the biggest heist in history. But we soon learn that Ocean has an additional motive. His ex-wife Tess Ocean (Julia Roberts) is the new curator at the Bellagio Art Gallery and is dating Terry Benedict. Of course, Ocean wants her back. Becoming a rich man might allow him his wish.

With two weeks to prepare for the big night, these eleven men are busy. The weeks go by quickly and the final night arrives. The scene is set...and the fun begins.

Ocean's Eleven is a popcorn flick more than anything else. It's entertaining without being fluff. Watching the heist unfold was really fun and seeing the characters squirm when something goes wrong was great (like the vault explosives' trigger not working because the batteries weren't fresh).

The movie had humour too. Watching the characters go through the antics of meeting each other and working together was such a blast to watch.

The only problem with this movie is that there are a lot of characters to know and, with a running time under two hours, it was difficult to understand each part of the operation. Personally, I wish I knew more of the characters' background and how they came to know Ocean and Ryan.

Ocean's Eleven is a great movie to just sit back and relax with. Compared to the original Ocean's Eleven this is a lot more fun. This was a light movie for Steven Sodenbergh when you compare it to Traffic and Erin Brockovich and I don't see Ocean's Eleven winning an Oscar, but I see it doing well at the MTV Movie Awards.

I give Ocean's Eleven 4 out of 5 stars.