Nerds That Geek Movie Review: 'Ocean's Eleven (2001)'

Written by John Edward Betancourt

As much as we seem to lament them in this day and age, remakes and reboots are here to stay and the fact of the matter is...they never really left in the first place. Just look back through the years and you'll find plenty of films from just about any decade that are a reimagining of an idea from ages ago. They're simply an important part of storytelling. We love to look at ideas from a different angle and sometimes a fresh interpretation is successful and sometimes it's an outright failure. 

But we often tend to lock in on the failures over the successes and that's a shame because once in a great while a wonderful remake comes along, one that manages to maintain the spirit of the original, all while giving us something wonderful and new to enjoy, as was the case when George Clooney brought back to life a Rat Pack classic, in 2001's Ocean's Eleven.

​Daniel Ocean, has more or less hit rock bottom. His wife has left him. He just wrapped up a stint in jail and now he's back in the regular world, without a penny to his name and with a bad taste in his mouth regarding his chosen profession of thievery. This unfortunate chain of events has led him to believe that it is high time to retire from a life of crime and he puts into motion an incredible plan to travel to Las Vegas to rob three casinos blind in a single night. But in order to pull this off, he'll need a crack team of thieves to accompany him on one last heist that will make all of them rich beyond their wildest dreams.

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It cannot be an easy task to remake a Rat Pack film, considering the respect and awe that Frank Sinatra and his buddies still command in this day and age, yet somehow Director Steven Soderbergh managed to assemble a cast to rival the star power of the first film, and crafted a movie that paid full respect to the original, while taking the story in a bold new direction and the end result of Steven's hard work is an absolutely magnificent motion picture.

Because everything about this movie is fun, which is ironic considering that in essence, this is a dark heist film, motivated purely by revenge. But it never feels like a dreary film, because the characters are good people at heart, and honorable thieves who are merely looking for the only way out of this industry that they can think of and truth be told...Terry Benedict is a jerk through and through, and there is a sense of satisfaction in knowing that he gets his just desserts, and all of this works and works well courtesy of a whip smart screenplay that rewards the audience for their time and attention and further puts the main characters upon a pedestal since the grand reveal of how they pull off this epic heist demonstrates just how smart they really are. 

Not to mention, the movie is a visual feast as well, perfectly capturing the glamour and glitz of Las Vegas and some of the images in and of these iconic casinos outright take your breath away. In the end however, Ocean's Eleven is a wonderful popcorn flick. There's no deeper meaning to be found here, just a story about eleven guys trying to improve their lives, and taking down a jerk in the process and well...since no one outside of Terry's bank account is harmed, that more or less makes this movie an ultra rare wholesome heist movie, and it's one that you should absolutely own or enjoy if you haven't had the opportunity to do so yet. 

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