Ocean's Eleven

I’m not going to compare this to the remake. It wouldn’t be fair. The remake has the benefit of modern conveniences and allowances the original doesn’t. It would be apples and toasters. Even with that comparison taken off the table, though, this is still just kinda dull. From a pacing and plotting standpoint, the movie is so far off the mark. It feels like an eternity is spent assembling the group, and planning out what seems like a two-step heist. Prank phone calls, unnecessary musical numbers, and family drama. So much family drama. I don’t care about try is person’s mom or that person’s cousin or whatever. There are so many subplots here that feel like wheel-spinning. But that leads to the other pacing issue; that the heist isn’t the end goal of this movie. After that is getting out of town, and there’s more side story drama, with a crew member dying and the casino owners hiring a guy to track down the money because they don’t trust the cops and who that guy is and getting the money from the drop site and … ugh, it’s just … tiring. The movie takes forever to get started, then won’t just stop, and has a severe case of ADD all throughout. Yes, the Rat Pack have a certain charm, I’m not going to deny that. Yes, it is cool to see this window into the Vegas of old. But at no point does this movie feel like a focused, refined movie. It feels like a kindergartner’s story, where it’s one big run on sentence tied together with “and then” every so often. It oozes charm and cool, but it is also wholly dependent on that charm papering over some fundamental cracks. Fugazi once sang “cool’s eternal, but it’s always dated”, and that sums up this movie to a tee. It was cool, and you can see why it was, but it isn’t cool NOW. What it is now is anachronistic, in style and in execution.