More is less: Ocean's Twelve fails to live up to original

Unlike its subtle and finely crafted predecessor Ocean's Eleven, Ocean's Twelve is spectacularly unspectacular. The execution of the sequel is as colorful as the original's, the cast as impressive, the acting as fresh and the actors as attractive. But the disjointed pace and plot leave the viewer unfulfilled.

The film opens three years after Danny Ocean (George Clooney) and his 10 colleagues' successful casino heist, and everyone is living it up and throwing money around on cars, diamonds and hotels. Somehow, the casino owner, Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia), tracks down the band of thieves and promises to kill them if they don't pay back what they stole with interest within two weeks. The band regroups to try to come up with the needed $97 million before its time runs out.

This is where the film starts to get absurd. In the span of about 30 seconds, one character remarks that the group is too infamous to work in North America, another character says, "Okay, let's go to Amsterdam," and the group suddenly arrives in their Dutch hotel. It turns out that Benedict was informed by "The Night Fox" (Vincent Cassel), a master thief trained by the thief legend La Marque himself, because La Marque wants to challenge Ocean to a battle of thievery to determine who is the best thief in the world. If Ocean wins, La Marque will pay off Benedict. As the film continues, it becomes more of a clichéd comic book rather than the tale of an elaborate series of heists.

Another downgraded aspect of the film is the complete lack of character building. Director Steven Soderbergh fails to reintroduce the audience to the established characters, and the new characters are given almost as little development. Master European Union detective Isabel Lahiri (Catherine Zeta-Jones) is conveniently an ex-lover of Rusty Ryan (Brad Pitt) and is portrayed as essentially omnipotent, able to reconstruct two complex robberies in their entirety from a piece of putty on the wall. There is also a smattering of haphazard sub-plots, including Lahiri's long-lost father, thief Linus Caldwell's (Matt Damon) previously unmentioned mother showing up to save the day and the "Night Fox's" completely unrealistic motivations.

One of the lamest plot twists is when Tess Ocean (Julia Roberts) creates a diversion by pretending to be Julia Roberts, who's supposed usefulness is never really explained. During the ruse, she encounters Bruce Willis (Bruce Willis) and has an awkward conversation about her feigned pregnancy. Although the scene is perfectly enjoyable, it's used as filler in a meandering film that, although colorful, lacks substance.

Still, looking past the weak characters and disjointed storyboard, the film is fun. Such a stellar and attractive cast can't go entirely wrong, even given the lack of material. One of the funniest characters is Caldwell, although his portrayal in this film is completely inconsistent with the one he played three years ago. He is the politically correct, ambitious and awkward thief who is as in touch with his self-esteem as he is out of touch with his professional competence and who feels guilty about stealing from the handicapped. In one scene, he is forced to deal with a character who supposedly invented his own language, and when nothing said to him makes any sense, Caldwell responds with the lyrics to Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir."

The film's main shortcoming, though, is that it is a heist movie without a heist. The fun in this kind of movie comes from watching an intricate job and figuring out how the thieves manage to pull it off. But all of the film's cons are uninteresting, unbelievable or unexplained, and the twist at the end seems more like a screenplay copout than a plot revelation. Although the film is adequately entertaining, it pales in comparison to Ocean's Eleven.

Ocean's Twelve runs 120 minutes and is rated PG-13 for language.