Franchise Friday: Ocean's Twelve (2004)
Soderbergh and Clooney's European vacation.
Ocean’s Twelve gets a lot of flack.
A European-set follow-up to Steven Soderbergh’s 2001 Vegas caper, the film rests at a disappointing 54% on Rotten Tomatoes, with the consensus stating, “While some have found the latest star-studded heist flick to be a fun, glossy star vehicle, others declare it's lazy, self-satisfied and illogical.”
I was one of those naysayers when I saw it on opening weekend. I’d absolutely flipped for the first film three years earlier, coasting on its boozy vibe, suspenseful set pieces and witty banter. I can still recall the deflating feeling that came over me at the end of this second installment. I felt like I’d paid my hard-earned money to watch George Clooney and his friends go on a European vacation, and the film's final reveals made me feel like the preceding two hours had been a waste of time that mocked my investment.
Watching it again, that’s all fair. Ocean’s Twelve is absolutely a movie that exists only to watch showcase people hanging out in even more beautiful settings, and its heist elements often feel tossed off and inconsequential. I completely understand why critics and audiences felt let down, and why 25-year-old me was disappointed.
And yet, 18 years later, watching it again for the first time since theaters, I had a blast. It’s not the well-oiled machine of Ocean’s Eleven, but it’s a similarly enjoyable vibe machine, another hangout film coasting on charisma that lets us live vicariously through its stars as they soak in the beauty of their locales and try to pull off another impossible con.
Together again
The film opens not in Vegas and not with Danny Ocean, but in Europe several years earlier, where Rusty (Brad Pitt) is returning home from a job. He lives with a beautiful woman (Catherine Zeta-Jones), who happens to be an Europol agent with a specialization in thieves. And as she catches Rusty up on her day, he realizes she’s about to discover his role in a major job. He heads to the bathroom and slips away into the night. It’s a different vibe than Ocean’s Eleven, more deliberately paced and leaning into the film’s distinctly European romanticism. But it’s still funny (the moment Rusty realizes the dirt on his shoes is going to be a dead give away is perfectly timed), and it sets the tone for the movie to come.
But unlike Ocean’s Eleven, the reasons for the heist aren’t tied into that emotional component. The gang is reassembled not because Danny wants to pull off one last job; he’s perfectly happy living with Tess (although I love the way that the film taps into his suburban ennui by having him case jobs when he’s running errands). Rather, the plot is set in motion when Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia) tracks down each member of the team with an order: give back all the money they stole, with interest, or he’ll kill them.
The montage of Benedict stalking across the nation to pull Ocean’s 11 back together — as well as a subsequent scene where the team takes issue with that moniker — is a delight. Garcia is playfully sinister, and Soderbergh gets a lot of laughs from keeping us guessing how he’ll appear in each scene. I also like the glimpses as to what everyone’s been doing in the years since Ocean’s 11, particularly Livingston’s attempt at stand-up comedy, Rusty’s continued frustrations with Topher Grace and Linus’ ongoing fear of being ratted out to his parents. There’s just the right measure of high stakes and humor.
Because the gang doesn’t hold down traditional jobs and they’ve spent most of what they stole (although I love the reveal that Livingston still has all his money because he lives with his parents), it looks like it’s going to be another heist to get Benedict’s money back, and the team heads to Amsterdam to begin the first of many jobs that will help them fundraise the cash.
Not any old job
It’s here that the movie starts to feel creaky, as the gang starts going through the motions of planning another robbery, and it looks like the film will be a series of jobs to help them build up the funds. Perhaps Soderbergh and screenwriter George Nolfi felt the sluggishness, too. “We’re forcing it,” Danny says at one point, and it feels like the filmmakers acknowledging that they’re hitting the wall of sequel expectations.
But Ocean’s Twelve ups the tension, and becomes a totally different movie, by introducing two new obstacles. The first is Rusty’s old flame, Isabel, who knows that her ex is in town for no good and is trying to keep one step ahead of them. The second is a master thief known as the Night Fox (Vincent Cassel), who makes a bet with Danny: if his crew can steal a priceless Faberge egg from the Galleria D'Arte di Roma, he’ll pay their debt to Benedict.
As with the first movie, the plot is both intricate and disposable. There are some fun suspense bits, including one where the team “lifts” a house, but the real reason that Ocean’s Twelve exists is for Soderbergh and his pals to traipse around Europe, including several scenes filmed at Clooney’s Lake Como mansion. And Soderbergh, once again serving as his own DP, takes in the European vistas and makes them look breathtaking. Hanging out in ancient cities in front of priceless works of art, all scored to a banging Europop soundtrack, lends the film a different vibe than the martini-laced neon of Vegas. Soderbergh and his cast seem looser and more eager to play; a late-in-the film flashback to the Night Fox evading the gallery’s lasers exists only so Cassel can partake in a complicated dance, and it’s a fun highlight.
The Rusty/Isabel relationship feels a bit more genuine than the love-hate flirtation between Danny and Tess in the first film, but it’s no less surfacey. Pitt and Zeta-Jones have a fun chemistry, and the film gains a lot from long shots of the two staring at each other from across a crowded room or courtyard. But the plot’s decision to make Isabel a cop willing to skirt the law to get what she wants (the better explaining her willingness to leave with Rusty at the end) and to (spoiler) have a father who was a master thief never really give the film much dramatic heft. But they don’t need to. They give just the hint of a moral wrestling or dramatic longing, but not enough to kill the buzz. Once again, Soderbergh concocts a film that feels like it goes deeper than it does, and that’s a feature, not a bug. The tension comes from wondering whether Ocean or his crew will stay out of jail long enough to snatch the egg before the Night Fox, and there’s a genuine sense of desperation after Isabel orders the arrest of most of the players.
Unexpected directions
This leads to one of the film’s funniest scenes, although one that many people rolled their eyes at upon release. Leaning on Tess’s uncanny resemblance to Julia Roberts, Linus flies her in to help complete the job, an idea complicated when Julia’s old friend Bruce Willis (playing himself) also shows up and keeps butting it.
I guess I understand why people didn’t like this approach. Bringing Roberts in to play a woman pretending to be herself feels a tad too cute and robs the film of some immersion in a fantasy world. But I don’t care. Roberts has fun, and the constant improvising required to keep up the ruse is a hoot. And, of course, it doesn’t work; shortly after Linus grabs the egg, Isabel reveals she was on to them all the time and arrests them all. Game over.
And here’s where people, including 2004 Chris, got really mad. After the arrest, an FBI agent (Cherry Jones) visits Linus in the prison and apparently gets him to rat out his friends in exchange for a lighter sentence. As they’re pulling away, it’s revealed the agent is actually Linus’s mother, and it’s all a part of the plan. It’s a good gag, but it’s not the final twist. Danny and Tess go visit the Night Fox and ask him to tell them how he stole the egg, which he reveals in a series of fun flashbacks (including the dance mentioned above). But then Danny drops the bomb: the egg that the Night Fox stole was actually a decoy. Danny and his crew took the real egg before it was even at the museum, during the transport. All the hoops that they jumped through were just to keep him occupied, since they knew he’d be watching their every move.
I definitely feels like a cheat. It suggests that all of our emotional investment before was wasted; we were watching people go through the motions when they’d already won. I initially felt like I was being kept out of the fun; we were asked to wait and hold our breath while Danny and his crew smugly knew they’d won all along.
It is a cheat for a heist movie, in which our knowledge of all the steps is crucial to our investment. But Ocean’s Twelve is also a con artist movie, and that’s a genre where being kept in the dark is part of the fun. The actual goal is not just to steal the egg, but to also keep the Night Fox from stealing it. Danny and the crew are pulling one over on him, but in turn they’re pulling one over on us; as Matt Singer noted in Indiewire a few years back, the audience is the mark.
I guess you could get mad, but having a bit of fun at the audience’s expense feels like the sort of playful thing that’s 100% in the spirit of this franchise (and lines up with Danny keeping Linus in the dark about the real plan in Ocean’s Eleven). Sure, I may feel like the suspense was manipulated; but it’s the movies, ALL the suspense is manipulated. Did audiences really go into this thinking that Danny Ocean and his crew would lose?
I don’t think Ocean’s Twelve is quite the home run that its predecessor was. The plot’s a bit messier and the first hour crawls in some parts. And yes, sometimes the smugness can be a bit much, and a few favorite characters are relegated to the background (particularly Bernie Mac). But it’s breezy fun and I enjoyed taking a European vacation by proxy.
Previous installments in this Franchise Friday series:
A Franchise Friday update!
A few months back, I finished a Franchise Friday look at Kevin Smith’s View Askewniverse movies. This week, Smith returned to New Jersey for Clerks III, which debuted in theaters as a Fathom event. I was mixed/positive on this latest release, but can also confidently say it’s the best film Kevin Smith has made in over a decade. Read my review at CinemaNerdz.