Ocean’s
Eleven
a film by Steven Sodebergh
released through Warner Brothers Pictures in 2001
In the chaos of the heist, the nonsense of it all is left obscured. The details of the robbery are brilliant, and
demonstrate a real creativity in screenwriting.
The break-in is laid out step by step as the film progresses, giving the
audience time to consider the logic behind each step. However, because we are never told how the
money will be removed, when the solution is finally revealed we have little
time to process all we are seeing.
Though obscuring the plans for removing the cash makes for good
suspense, it may also hide defects in the plotting. The primary point of concern involves the
video feed.
After Matt Damon's Linus and George
Clooney's Danny meet up with Shaobo Qin's Yen in the vault, Brad Pitt's Rusty
makes the call to casino boss Terry Benedict, played by Andy Garcia. He is told that he is being robbed. Looking at a video monitor showing his vault
perfectly secure, he begs to differ. But
a new image flashes up on the screen showing three men stacking cases of money. The deal Rusty proposes is simple. Help us remove $80 million, or we'll blow up
all the money--$160 million. Benedict
complies, and we see men taking six large bags off an elevator, removing them
to a van. The van heads to the airport,
followed by a score of security cars.
The S.W.A.T. team is brought in to take back the vault before the
robbers can detonate that money and the money now sitting in a van at the
airport. The S.W.A.T team neutralizes
the thieves and is ordered out. An
explosion had ripped through the vault.
Some money is left, and a lot of fliers for hookers. The van at the airport contains, it is
discovered, only handbills for hookers.
They soon realize that what they saw on the screen—three men robbing the
Bellagio vault—was staged because on the original screen, showing everything
calm, a Bellagio logo graced the floor.
The footage of the robbery showed a bare floor with no logo. The S.W.A.T. team were the robbers. They had been conned.
First, let's consider some of the
slippery details. Linus and Danny
descend an elevator shaft during the blackout, which renders the laser
detection system cris-crossing the shaft useless. Using winches-of-a-sort, they rapidly fall to
the bottom but, dangling, are forced to cut the lines to fall the final ten
feet. Just after they do, the power
comes back on. Now, it may be their
weight that keeps these lines falling.
If so, once they cut the lines, they would quickly retract. But there was no sound of retraction. The lines just disappear. It seems they should still be there,
dangling, to trigger the alarm system and end the entire operation.
Where did the six bags that went to
the van come from? Since they were full
of hooker fliers, they were not in the vault to start with. Danny and Linus carry nothing down with them. The bags may have been stored in the crawl
spaces above the ceiling that they traverse effortlessly, but the origin of the
bags is left unclear.
When Terry Benedict hurries down to
the vault after the S.W.A.T. team has penetrated the area, he finds the debris
and wreckage brought on by the incendiary bomb.
But he does not see the three robbers.
Is he not curious? Danny is
already on his ways back through the ducts to the sound proof room where he is
supposed to be getting beat up. Linus
and Yen have probably donned S.W.A.T. gear brought down by the other guys in
their huge bags that, upon their dismissal by Terry Benedict, carry out $160
million. They would have had to work
fast to get the money packed before Benedict got down there. And are they just betting that he will order
them to leave? If he doesn't, what
excuse are they going to make so they can get out of there before he wises
up? And just how long after they leave
does Terry call upstairs? It's only a
few seconds until Benedict asks about the security tape. He realizes what happens, yet he does not
call on his security to stop the S.W.A.T. guys.
And if they have left, one call to the Las Vegas police will ensure that
the money never gets anywhere. And...how
is the money going to be distributed to the Eleven? They just walk away, but who is going to take
the risk of trying to make drop-offs with Terry Benedict breathing down his
neck? There are a lot of unanswered
questions.
But...they do not have to be
answered. Certainly if we knew every
detail of the robbery the film would last five hours or more. What is inexcusable is the reckless
wastefulness of the plan. Terry Benedict
is made to believe a robbery is taking place, so he calls in the cops. A fake S.W.A.T. team that is supposed to be
there cleaning things up performs the actual robbery and gets away.
All the problems with the nuclear
device, with convincing Terry Benedict to store valuable goods in the vault,
with lifting the secret codes in the gaming commission episode, could have been
avoided. Make him think he is being
robbed, drop the six bags through the ceiling into the elevator, have him call
the cops, pose as cops, break into the vault, fake an assault, take the
money. And aside from allowing Yen to
test his jump, the copy of the vault they constructed is worthless. They used an older video feed to fool
security into thinking everything was normal.
If they were not going to break in until posing as a S.W.A.T. team, it
would be necessary to establish a ruse and utilize the reproduction. But Linus, Danny, and Yen really do break
in. And they can scurry about
convincingly enough to incite Terry Benedict to call the 'cops'.
It's all a tangled mess. In any movie with an opponent or adversary, building him up to be a formidable man, a smart, decisive conqueror is great; the final victory will be all the sweeter because it was hard-earned. But it also means that explaining how the opponent can be bested is all the tougher. The character of Terry Benedict is constructed as a ruthless casino owner. He is smart and savvy. And, at the end of the movie, he is duped. But the audience shouldn't be.
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