To Catch A Thief

Ocean’s Twelve, starring George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Julia Roberts, et al

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

Perhaps no other director working in Hollywood today with artistic ambitions is more adept at also producing quality mainstream movies than Steven Soderbergh. In films like Erin Brockovich and Out of Sight, Soderbergh brings his trademark visual and narrative style to films aimed at a wider audience, making for satisfying yet not too challenging entertainment. It’s a feat that eludes Wes Anderson in his latest film, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, who appears unable to rein in his artistic impulses in the service of a more conventional narrative film. Presumably working on these major studio films affords Soderbergh the opportunity to also work on riskier and more artistically ambitious films like Traffic and The Limey.

While I don’t count Ocean’s Eleven among those mainstream successes—the movie seemed more like an excuse to get a lot of big stars together in a movie than a sincere attempt to make a quality film—its sequel, Ocean’s Twelve, does manage to present a more conventional entertainment with a welcome degree of originality and verve, due not only to Soderbergh’s directorial talents but also to a well-written script with several nice plot twists. Ocean’s Twelve reunites the cast of the earlier film, a group of thieves assembled by Danny Ocean (George Clooney) and co-led by Rusty Ryan (Brad Pitt). In this go-round, the mark they ripped off earlier, Terry Ryan (Andy Garcia), has tracked them all down and demands they pay him back what they stole from him with interest, and so the group must now embark on a new series of heists to raise this money.

While the plot may seem a bit thin, it’s actually not, given the details of how Terry is able to track down each member of the group and what ensues. These details involve the appearance of a rival to Ocean’s larcenous activities, the mysterious Night Fox, played here with the perfect combination of arrogance and charm by French actor Vincent Cassel. As the story of each caper and double-cross unfolds, Soderbergh employs some of his usual techniques of allowing dialog to run on into the next scene, often with serendipitous results, as well as shooting group scenes with a single handheld camera to heighten the feeling of intimacy.

Unlike in the previous film, the secondary characters in Ocean’s Twelve are sharply-delineated, and the film’s good lines, of which there are many, are divided more evenly among the large cast. Particular standouts are Matt Damon as the insecure logistics expert who desperately wants to play a more active role in the group's operations, and Elliot Gould as the veteran numbers guy who comes up with some priceless moments of comic exasperation.

The first two-thirds of Ocean’s Twelve is about as good as mainstream film gets, with some inspired comedy, intricate caper scenes, and a confident, well-paced script that doles out regular helpings of unexpected surprises. It all seems like it’s going to inevitably lead to an extremely satisfying conclusion, but unfortunately, Soderbergh and writer George Nolti prove unable to resist throwing in one or two unnecessary twists at the end, including one involving a well-known actor playing himself. These superfluous flourishes slow down the momentum of the movie and are sometimes downright confusing. They’re akin to a basketball team making one pass too many when one player already has a great shot at the basket. Still, the film is extremely enjoyable and a welcome improvement on Ocean’s Eleven, with Soderbergh cementing his reputation as one of the most versatile and original filmmakers working today.

Stars: ***

The Fabulous Destiny of...Mathilde?

A Very Long Engagement, starring Audrey Tautou, Gaspard Ulliel, Ticky Holgado, Marion Cotillard, Dominique Pinon, and Chantal Neuwirth
Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet
(In French with English subtitles)

The first half or so of A Very Long Engagement might as well be titled the Further Adventures of Amélie, so closely does it hew to the style and plot of that earlier international hit, which also teamed director Jean-Pierre Jeunet with Audrey Tautou. Like Amélie, Engagement has at its center a quirky, slightly frail heroine who’s incurably romantic and prone to superstitious beliefs. Engagement also shares with its predecessor the device of introducing each character with a rapid summation of their personal history and quirks in voice-over. And among the actors, I counted at least four from the earlier film in Engagement.

Even fans of the earlier film, however, among whom I count myself, will likely not be pleased at how similar Engagement is to Amélie. After all, the movie isn’t titled the Further Adventures of Amélie, and that’s probably not what most of us were expecting to see. Instead, the likely hope was that Jeunet would apply his unique visual style to tell an entirely new story, and that Tautou might reveal her ability to play something other than a gamine romantic with her head in the clouds.

In the case of this film, both Jeunet and Tautou are given ample material with which to fashion something original. Engagement is based on a recent French bestseller of the same name about Mathilde, a young soldier’s fiancée during World War I who believes against all odds that her beloved Manech is still alive. In the story, Manech, who’s played in the film by the very young-looking Gaspard Ulliel, is sentenced along with four other soldiers to be court-martialed for injuring himself in an attempt to get discharged. The rest of his story is told via flashback in bits and pieces as Mathilde tracks down every possible clue in hopes of finding him.

Although the story’s initial battle scenes are rendered with an impressive realism reminiscent of Saving Private Ryan, the film doesn’t really start to come into its own until it allows characters other than Tautou to take over the screen and tell their stories. Most notable among these other characters is Jodie Foster in an unbilled cameo as the wife of one of the officers who witnessed Manech’s final days. Speaking in perfect French, Foster gives an incredibly heartfelt and realistic performance that contrasts sharply with the often whimsical or exaggerated dispositions of the film’s primary characters. Marion Cotillard does the same in a subsequent scene as the vengeful lover of one of Manech’s fellow soldiers, helping the film to build to its inevitable conclusion.

It's only when Jeunet abandons the fanciful tone of Amélie, however, that his film is able to achieve a deeper level of resonance. For it’s then that his bravura storytelling skills are used most effectively to illustrate the film’s themes of the power of love and the idiocy of war.

Stars: **1/2