“Ocean’s Eleven” was when Steven Soderbergh took the art house to the mainstream. It wasn’t Oscar bait like “Traffic” and “Erin Brokovich,” and it wasn’t gritty and experimental like “Sex, Lies and Videotape.” It was just pure Hollywood fun in the biggest way possible, which is probably the reason why most critics were unkind to it. To see such a gigantic studio picture with no lofty ambitions come from an otherwise serious director was like a concert pianist pounding out a little honky-tonk, as Roger Ebert put it in his 2001 review.
But to see how much it gets right, how different it feels and how unique it looks at every moment in comparison to similar Hollywood capers like it is to realize that “Ocean’s Eleven” is a great film after all, and a fun one. Continue reading “Ocean’s Eleven (2001)”