Ocean’s Twelve (2004)

Film:

Ocean’s Twelve

Vintage:

2004

Series:

Ocean’s (2001), #2

Finished watching:

9^th August, 2022 (second time)

Might contain spoilers.

A very different film from the first one—not that I noticed when I watched it in the theatre 20 years ago—and quite silly at times. Still, it’s another enjoyable and funny entry. Whereas Eleven was a lesson in the power of film stars, Twelve is instead a well-made film with some big names and, of course, another engaging heist at its center.

As far as the cast goes: this is more Brad Pitt’s film than George Clooney’s; Catherine Zeta-Jones looks fantastic (though I wonder why her character is Isabelle Lahiri); and Bruce Willis’s cameo is a bit hard to understand the purpose of, but who could fail to enjoy Julia Roberts pretending to be Julia Roberts?

Vincent Cassel is excellent as Toulour, including the unbelievable sequence of him evading the lasers using capoeira.^[1] He spends much of his time being smugly competent, but it’s in his last scene, as he realizes he’s been beaten and asks them to leave, that his humanity comes to the fore.

While I dislike comparing them for obvious reasons, I have to admit I prefer Lefty from The Italian Job (2003) to Basher: Lefty has much more personality, the I’m about to put the pin in this detonator scene, and no fake cockney accent. However, though both films ending up with a Black demolitions expert is a sad commentary on Hollywood’s limited imagination, at least this one also has Frank and Yen.