journal features

movie review - Ocean's Twelve

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Kokubunji, 2021.03.08

This is a sequel. No, it's not the 12th in the series, but only the second. I only vaguely recalled the first one and wanted to see what this offered and as it went on I started to remember.

I think the formula for these movies works fine on paper but not on screen. There's just something wrong with it. Too many chiefs and not enough indians, perhaps. Anyway, Ocean's Eleven get together again and this time they somehow enlist the guy they robbed last time. On that shaky premise they pull off three robberies in Europe and I have to say even as I write it I am reliving the underwhelming stakes and the hammy mugging and the too-clever scenes like in the previous movie where they snuck one of the guys into a vault in a box just because the actor can unfold himself from a box. Half the time I saw the thing unfolding a mile away. The rest of the time I was confused and a bit annoyed, like the joke was on me but told by sniggering thirteen year old dunces.

Not recommended. I have no one but myself to blame for watching this. And maybe Netflix.

rand()m quote

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.

—Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.