"Ocean's Eleven"

Soderbergh's crisp, funny heist flick makes out like a bandit. George Clooney and Elliott Gould steal the show.

By Stephanie Zacharek

Dec. 7, 2001 | The north and south of Steven Soderbergh's sharply creased and polished heist movie "Ocean's Eleven" are represented by two actors -- one the star and the other a minor player only in terms of the number of lines he gets.

George Clooney, as smoothie thief Daniel Ocean, is a movie star in every sense of the word. He carries the picture in his breast pocket: You look for his face when you feel the plot getting a little too busy or too slick.

Elliott Gould, in a much smaller role as an old-style casino owner fallen on semihard times, is Clooney's polar opposite, but he's just as essential to the movie. Clooney is all controlled class, delivered with a devilish wink; Gould throws off energy in reckless, fiery pinwheels, as if he's rigged his performance to blow up the camera instead of make love to it. Together, they threaten to sneak off with the movie when Soderbergh isn't looking, sowing madness and sex appeal in their wake.

But Soderbergh keeps control by ceding it: He maintains a careful rein on the tightly worked plot -- a story about classy rapscallions who set out to rob a trio of casinos -- without ever tightening the noose on his actors. "Ocean's Eleven" works because it has a light, swinging feel; you're less likely to notice if the story is a little jagged in places because the tone is so even and smooth.

Soderbergh has become one of our most sure-footed directors. Last year's "Erin Brockovich" had an easygoing facility, like a '40s women's soaper. As such, it was far more enjoyable than the artfully sliced-and-diced but stiff and mechanical "Traffic," widely praised as the superior movie of the two. And in terms of structure and style, both "The Limey" (1999) and "Out of Sight" (1998) were much better movies.

At the very least, though -- and among his later movies, "Traffic" may be the one exception -- Soderbergh isn't the kind of director to let his filmmaking style get in the way of our movie watching. And he knows how to guide actors toward their easiest, most natural rhythms -- or, perhaps more accurately, he gives them the space to find them.

Soderbergh's "Ocean's Eleven" is a remake of Lewis Milestone's 1960 heist comedy "Ocean's 11," starring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and Angie Dickinson. But this version is more like a real movie in which actors are allowed to attempt to act -- not just an occasion for a group of martini-guzzling hipsters to goof around in front of the camera. If the first "Ocean's Eleven" was a decent idea that fell flat in the execution, this time around there's a breezy stylishness to the filmmaking that seems true to at least the intent of the original. One of the only problems, however, is that there are so many guys on "Ocean'"s team that only a few of them are delineated as well as they should be. Still, Soderbergh lets his actors have some fun.

When we first meet Danny Ocean -- it's a name you can't ignore, like Johnny Appleseed, a name with a wide-open mythology already folded right into it -- he's just been sprung from a New Jersey penitentiary. We see him sauntering out into the bright morning wearing the same clothes he came in with, a perfectly tailored black tux and loosely slung untied bow tie -- a sartorial aphrodisiac if there ever was one, especially when worn by a looker like Clooney. But then, it all depends on the woman: Ocean's estranged wife, Tess (Julia Roberts), won't have anything to do with him. She's taken up with a plasticky-cool Las Vegas casino mogul named Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia), which naturally plays no part whatsoever in Ocean's resolution that he must tap into Benedict's stash.

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