A SURE THING
by
Lovell
Mahan-Moutaw


Steven Soderbergh has a way of making style look like substance. By the time you figure it out though, you don't care. You've been dazzled. Or at least that's what happens to me. It happened to me again with Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven.

Danny Ocean (George Clooney) is paroled. He's a thief. Within days (hours? minutes?) he is setting up a job. He starts recruiting immediately, and this takes him to Rusty (Brad Pitt), who has digressed in his profession to the point that he is teaching WB teen stars how to play poker. You immediately get the impression from the clothes these folks wear (not the WB teen stars) that they are not small-time criminals. Danny has the idea to rob a few casinos in Las Vegas. The casinos he wants to rob are all owned by one man, Harry Benedict (Andy Garcia). The project is practically impossible. To pull it off you have to have brains, skill, talent, luck and a huge pair (or eleven huge pairs) of cojones. Danny and Rusty assemble their team, everyone signs on for this essential death wish, and off we go. Except there is the problem of Tess (Julia Roberts).

The story is good - complicated enough to make you think you're thinking, yet easy enough to follow. It is directed beautifully, and it is gorgeous to watch. The photography is spectacular - Soderbergh, once again acting as his own DP, makes Vegas look pretty, if you can believe that. Furthermore, the musical score (David Holmes, who also did Soderbergh's Out of Sight) is awesome. The music realy helps the scenes work.

That's really as much as I can say. This is candy, folks, movie candy and eye candy and nothing else. That doesn't matter; you don't care. After you leave you've enjoyed what you saw so much you want to go back and see it again. It is fun and it is beautiful and it is entertaining. What better way to spend one's time?

George Clooney is fine. Soderbergh makes him burn a little brighter than he normally does. He's cocky and sexy and sweet, and I'm assuming that's what he needed to be. I can't get a handle on ol' George though. Don't know if he has it or if he's faking it. Soderbergh makes it look real.

Brad Pitt is given an extraordinary wardrobe that had me squirming in my chair. I mean, his suits and shirts actually turned me on. At one point, we get a close up of his shoulders and you can see the texture of the material and, I kid you not, I wanted to jump into the screen just to feel it. But Pitt's character is essentially around to talk tough, act cool, walk with a panther-like grace and stand around thinking beautifully. He is utterly wasted unless the point is to give the gals something to look at, and there wasn't a waste of that at all.

Andy Garcia's villain is not much of a villain. I don't know why I'm not supposed to like him except that he chooses really disturbing yet somewhat comical clothing. But that's no reason to steal $163 million from a guy.

Julia Roberts is miscast. She is also too damn skinny. She looks like hell. Dammit, I love Julia. I think she has an extraordinary talent. But in this film she looks like she's ill or something. Gorgeous clothes and shoes, but they don't even look like they fit her. It's strange and slightly frightening.

This whole casting thing seems to be Soderbergh's excuse to have a three month party with some friends. Don Cheadle and Matt Damon were, I don't know, broke? Needing a paycheck? Maybe Cheadle felt like being dressed as a stereotypical Londoner in mid-winter (even though he's in Vegas). Maybe Damon has a penchant for being overshadowed by the beauty of his co-stars. God only knows. Wasted. There is good comic relief provided by Virgil and Turk, the Mormon boys played by Casey Affleck, who is a much more interesting actor than his brother, and Scott Caan, who only had to appear on screen for me to start giggling. Elliot Gould and Carl Reiner round out the pack of notables, and if you watch them closely, you can see how it's supposed to be done.

I'd see it again, I might even own it for a chance to slo-mo through Pitt's clothes and catch some of the dialogue I missed. Or maybe because I love Steven Soderbergh, and was inspired by his Oscar speech, and dig anything he does on some level. I recommend this movie as pure escapist fun.

©2001 Lovell Mahan-Moutaw
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