WordSound 50: The Greatest thing you never heard

Title: Ocean's Twelve
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Cast: Look above if you need to know.
Released: 2005

Oceans Twelve was a fun film to watch. Many critics have apparently said it was bad. I guess they did anyway- I don't read other critics so what do I care? That's what people told me before I went to see the film anyway. As I watched it, I began to see that this film practically presented opportunity after opportunity for criticism. Films that break a bit of new ground or are much more clever than what most people are used to tend to fall on one side or the other, and this will always be a divisive film for many people. I turned to my right at the end and one of my friends said "well that was a pile of sh-- wasn't it?", turned to my left and my other friend was in shock staring at the screen and telling me about the perfect shots as the end credits rolled.

Soderbergh's sense of style has gradually increased, from 'Out of Sight', to 'Oceans Eleven' and even 'Solaris', and I have seen the directors classy touch increasing film-by-film, however on 'Oceans 12' it seems to me that, especially with dialogue, he has reached a new high.

Let's talk about the problems though, because they exist. Firstly, nobody wants to see a film that is full of references to the film before it, and on a more general level- no one wants to feel excluded. At times I could sense that a lot of people in the audience felt excluded. True, it's not often we see such dry and suggestive humour from American films, but the amount of times there is a long silence followed by a moment where you're supposed to 'laugh wryly' (if that's something people do) makes you think the humour could have been looked at and maybe varied just a little bit more. I know that the cast had a fun time making this film, but that seems to be one of the problems, it almost feels as if they're forgetting about the audience at times, as if this whole film was just an excuse for the 12 stars of this film (or the important white ones anyway) to get together and record a special commentary with the DVD when it comes out in a few months, laughing and joking about 'this scene' and 'that scene' and how 'this bit right here was actually an inside joke', and 'that little homage was originally Brad's idea'.

Secondly, there were a bit too much explanations of things using flashbacks. Okay we understand that the film is about robbers, but because of the stop-start nature of the script (which is dependent on tricking the audience continuously anyway) some of the escape scenes seem completely unnecessary, and some of the explanations, whilst interesting at the time, leave you scratching your head when you leave the cinema. The Chinese guy doesn't need to make himself all small and hide inside a duffle bag- that just wasn't necessary was it?

Now let's look at the positives, because they also exist and they are more important. I don't remember seeing as many interesting shots in any film since Hirokazu Kore-eda's sublime (sublime I tell you!) 'Maborosi'. I mean, Soderbergh and his director of photography have really put thought and detail into the composition of every single shot, and that is one of the things that makes this film as fresh as it is. How many times have we seen the shot of a plane landing from the sky? Too many, so in this film, we see a plane landing, but the camera is turned on its side, giving a whole new shape to the shot, a whole new way of looking at planes. It's perfectly spaced, and perfectly interesting. Simple touches like this make it wonderful. Also the hand held camera is used a lot more, which suits the smaller, more enclosed European environment, which the film is set in.

Then there is the scene where you have George Clooney and Brad Pitt sitting in an Italian hotel room in the middle of the night watching 'Happy Days' dubbed into Italian, with a teasing few seconds of Arthur Fonzarelli talking that will just crack you up every time you think back to it. It's a nice example of an American film being unashamedly American. A lot of people might call this a European style film, seeing as it's set in Europe, and Soderbergh himself seems to lean more towards European cinema in his style than he does toward Hollywood. But then, this is an all-American movie. That's just a fact, and it's nice to see American humour at its best, and not having to pander in any way to European style, we really do see all these guys as Americans in Europe, and that kind of displacement and contrast is interesting. Also, the film takes a few pot shots at the French 'master-thief' (played by the increasingly annoying Vincent Cassel) with subtle lines about him like, "He's French" dropped every now and then. He is pompous, smug and arrogant, and the Americans make him look stupid by the end of it. Make your own mind up, I thought it was a bit childish actually.

At the end of the day, I don't need to see a film about bank robbers and how they always get away with it and it always ends up okay and yeah they're all good looking and so on and so on. I'm not too bothered about that. I have to say though, that even for a few minutes, as they all got arrested and we see those 1970's style zoom-in's, it was nice to feel like this film may have been taking a completely different direction, only for a few twists and turns to make everything normal and happy-ending-ish again. That's okay though, for the simple fact that this film has an abundance of interesting ideas, shots and even one piece of honest tearful emotion (in a film that is admittedly, a little pompous at times) to make it 'not a waste of time'. Indeed, the director even gives Brad Pitt a pretty awful haircut for some of the flashback scenes, which I think is quite fresh and fun. All in all, a good film if you think you know what you're going to get.

Y.Misdaq aka Yoshi, 06-07th Feb 2005