| Ocean's Twelve | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Steven Soderbergh |
| Written by | George Nolfi |
| Based on | |
| Produced by | Jerry Weintraub |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Peter Andrews |
| Edited by | Stephen Mirrione |
| Music by | David Holmes |
Production companies |
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| Distributed by | Warner Bros. Pictures |
Release date |
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Running time | 125 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $110 million[1] |
| Box office | $362.9 million[1] |
Ocean's Twelve is a 2004 Americanheistcomedy film directed bySteven Soderbergh and written byGeorge Nolfi. The second installment in theOcean's film trilogy franchise and the sequel toOcean's Eleven (2001), the film features anensemble cast includingGeorge Clooney,Brad Pitt,Matt Damon,Catherine Zeta-Jones,Andy García,Don Cheadle,Bernie Mac,Julia Roberts,Casey Affleck,Scott Caan,Vincent Cassel,Eddie Jemison,Carl Reiner, andElliott Gould.
Ocean's Twelve was released theatrically in the United States on December 10, 2004, byWarner Bros. Pictures. The film received mixed reviews from critics and grossed $362.9 million worldwide, becoming thetenth-highest-grossing film of 2004. It was followed byOcean's Thirteen (2007), with Soderbergh and most of the cast again returning.
Terry Benedict locates all eleven members ofDanny Ocean's crew, demanding they return the $160 millionthey stole from his casinos plus $38 million in interest. He gives them a two-week deadline to return the money, under the threat that he will have them arrested or killed.
Short by half the amount, the group schemes to stage a heist inAmsterdam to avoid problems with U.S. authorities. Saul decides not to participate since he is too old for another grand heist. They are tipped off by an informant named Matsui about the location of the firststock certificate ever issued. After a complex series of schemes, they find the document has already been stolen by master thief the "Night Fox".Europol detective Isabel Lahiri is called in to investigate the theft and realizes that she gave Rusty the idea of how to solve a complication of the heist with a description of a similar burglary during their earlier relationship. Surprising the group at their accommodation, she warns them they cannot beat the Night Fox or his mentor, the mysterious master thief "Gaspar LeMarc",[2] both of whom excel in the "long con", and steals Rusty's phone. She has been hunting both for years.
Danny and his crew discover that the Night Fox is François Toulour, a wealthy Frenchbaron andgentleman thief with a villa onLake Como. Danny goes to the villa and steals Toulour's paintings. Confronting Toulour, Ocean learns that Toulour exposed their identities to Benedict (breaking the code of silence among thieves) and hired Matsui to inform the crew about the stock certificate so as to meet with Danny. Toulour is outraged when LeMarc suggested Danny may be a better thief than him, so he challenges him to steal theImperial Coronation Fabergé egg. If Danny and his crew win, he will pay off their debt to Benedict.
The crew begin to plan an elaborate heist to swap the egg for aholographic recreation, but Toulour gives the camera recordings from his villa to Lahiri, who deduces that they want to steal the egg through an intercepted phone call to Rusty. She then captures most of the crew except Linus, Basher, Turk, and Saul. Linus comes up with a second plan involving Danny's wife, Tess, posing as a pregnantJulia Roberts in order to get close to the egg and swap it. They are foiled by Lahiri and a coincidentally presentBruce Willis, and the rest of the group members are captured. Lahiri is told that they are to beextradited to the U.S., while Linus is chosen first to be interrogated by theFBI agent assigned to collect them. The agent is actually Linus's mother, who organizes the release of the whole gang. She points out to Lahiri that she will face consequences for forging a signature on a Europol form to obtain the necessary arrest warrants for Ocean's gang.
Sometime later, Danny and Tess return to Toulour's villa, where Toulour expresses glee at their failure. He explains that he stole the egg at night using his agility and dancing skills to evade the museum's heavy security. Toulour's celebration is short-lived when Danny reveals that his group stole the real egg while it was in transit to the museum, and Toulour realizes they were tipped off by LeMarc. A flashback reveals that Danny and Rusty had met LeMarc earlier when he revealed hisconfidence trick intended to humiliate Toulour and, at the same time, restore to himself the Fabergé egg that he had stolen years ago but returned following his wife's wishes. Toulour is forced to admit that Danny won the bet and gives him the money for the debt to Benedict.
Rusty takes Lahiri to a safe house that he claims has been lent to him by LeMarc. There, she is reunited with her father, who is revealed to be the man she has been pursuing for years: LeMarc. As the crew pay back Benedict and promise not to perform any more heists in his casinos, Toulour is seen in the background spying on them.
The script was reworked whenJulia Roberts learned she was pregnant with twins.[3]
The film was shot in 2003 inAtlantic City, New Jersey; inSt. Petersburg, Florida; and inLas Vegas at theBellagio Hotel. Filming also took place inChicago,Amsterdam,Paris,Monte Carlo,Lake Como (atVilla Erba inCernobbio),Rome, andCastellammare del Golfo inSicily. The production spent three weeks in the Netherlands; scenes were filmed in theKattenKabinet, theHotel Pulitzer, theHaarlem railway station, andThe Hague City Hall.[4] In Paris, scenes were shot at theSorbonne, theAustralian Embassy, and theGare du Nord. Afterwards, filming moved to Italy. TheMonte Carlo Casino and theVilla Erba (on Lake Como) also served as filming locations.[5]
On review aggregation websiteRotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 55% based on 188 reviews, and an average rating of 5.9/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "While some have found the latest star-studded heist flick to be a fun, glossy star vehicle, others declare it's lazy, self-satisfied and illogical."[6] OnMetacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 58 out of 100, based on 39 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[7] This made it the lowest-ratedOcean's film on both websites. Audiences polled byCinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale, the lowest of all films in theOcean's franchise.[8]
The film was criticized for its slow start, its complex plot and a final twist that negated much of the preceding action.The Washington Post's Stephen Hunter said that "it all ends on one of those infuriatingly sloppy notes where, having dramatized narrative events WXYZ for us, which we have taken on good faith, it suddenly and arbitrarily delivers narrative events STUV, which completely invalidate events WXYZ."[9]Newsweek said that "while it looks like the cast is having a blast and a half, the studied hipness can get so pleased with itself it borders on the smug."[10]Claudia Puig withUSA Today remarked, "At the rate things are going, all of Hollywood will put in about a day's work onOcean's Seventeen."[11]Ocean's Twelve was rated byEntertainment Weekly as one of "The 25 Worst Sequels Ever Made".[12]
In a positive review for theChicago Sun-Times,Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and applauded its cleverness: "The movie takes inventory of its characters with the same droll wit it does everything else ... The movie is all about behavior, dialogue, star power and wiseass in-jokes. I really sort of liked it."[13] Steven Soderbergh has stated that it is his favorite of the then-threeOcean's films.[14]
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The original soundtrack toOcean's Twelve was released byWarner Bros. Records on December 7, 2004.David Holmes returned to compose the music for the film and won aBMI award.
Holmes' songs "Amsterdam" and "I Love Art...Really!" were released as singles and do not appear on the commercial soundtrack LP.[15] "The Real Story" is different in the film, which uses "Rito a Los Angeles" by Peppino de Luca, featuring part of the main riff of "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida". The album also lacks "Thé à la Menthe" performed byLa Caution, used during the Night Fox "laser-dance" sequence, "Margaret" by Giuseppe De Luca, which plays as the group are escorted from the police station, and "El Capitalismo Foraneo" by Gotan Project, which plays as Lahiri cracks Matsui.
"Ascension to Virginity" was taken from the soundtrack ofthe 1968 movieCandy, where it likewise appeared in theepilogue.
All songs by David Holmes
A sequel, titledOcean's Thirteen was released in 2007, also directed by Steven Soderbergh.[16] It is the third installment in the Ocean's franchise, and the final film in the Ocean's Trilogy. All the male cast members reprised their roles, withAl Pacino andEllen Barkin joining the cast, but neither Julia Roberts nor Catherine Zeta-Jones returned.
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