My review of Ocean's 11

It has been a few years since I have seen this one and I must say that it was as funny and entertaining as I remembered.

Acting/Characters: It has a great cast: George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Andy Garcia the list goes on and on. Each role is done very well and I loved all of the characters. Except Julia Robert's character. Not a huge fan of her at any rate really. But other than that, all of the characters were really great and excellent to watch. I really liked the screen chemistry between a lot of the characters, Pitt, Clooney and Damon worked very well together and the two playing the arguing brothers were really great to watch as well. 8/10

Plot: Basic heist plot. You got your crew and you have the target. Crew is a motley bunch and the target is a powerful businessman. There were some other excellent plot elements and as such the film went new directions than I would have guessed. Some bits were predictable but a lot of it was funny original and just all around entertaining to watch. 8.5/10

Screenplay: Like I said there was great chemistry between the crew and I feel that was due in large part to the witty and excellent screenplay. I found myself laughing at the jokes that they all made and I had a great time listening to the dialogue. It is rare that I find a great screenplay these days in a non-classic Oscar winning film, but I found one here. 8.5/10

Likableness: Like I said, this film is extremely likable. All of the characters (except Julia Robert's character) are really fun to watch and you are usually left wondering where the film is going next. You invest yourself in the movie and that pays off big time. I would highly suggest this to anyone who has not seen it. 8.5/10

Final Score: 33.5 83% (N)


Trivia Time: 1. Cameos.
a. Jeffery Kurland the costume designer appears as one of the tailors fitting Saul Bloom's suit.
b. Steven Soderbergh as a team member of the vault-bombing thieves.
c. Jerry Weintraub The producer is talking to Saul at a card table in the casino before he speaks to Benedict.
d. Henry Silva and Angie Dickinson, who both appeared in the original Ocean's Eleven, appear during the fight scene.

2. George Clooney had a keg of Guinness installed in his dressing room.

3. The cast did gamble during off hours. While there's disagreement between who won the most (George Clooney says Matt Damon, Damon says Brad Pitt), Clooney managed to lose 25 hands of blackjack in a row.

4. There is a scene in the trailer in which Danny asks the parole-board members how much they earn a year. This was cut from the movie because the director talked to some actual parole-board members and they all agreed that if a prospective parolee were to make that comment, he'd be denied parole.

5. In one of the scenes where the gang is discussing the heist, they are sitting in a house that is actually under the busy streets of Las Vegas.

6. The wig used by Rusty (Brad Pitt) in his disguise as a doctor was Mike Myers's rehearsal wig for Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery

7. In nearly every scene Rusty's in, he's eating something. According to Brad Pitt, this is because the whole gang (his character in particular) would be so busy that they'd rarely be able to eat; it was decided that Rusty would just eat all the time. He first mentioned this when he was eating after having worked all day without a break for lunch and was hungry, because he thought it would be a good character trait for Rusty Ryan as well.