THE FADED SPOTLIGHT

A glossy, well-tailored caper that doesn’t ask to be taken seriously and wouldn’t even care if you forget all of it by morning. Ocean’s Eleven is Vegas as it should be: slick, neon-lit, and built to glide. More directly, this is a high-tech heist fantasy—one with just enough suave detachment that it passes for wit.

George Clooney plays Danny Ocean, recently paroled and already plotting his next job. Which is to rob not one, not two, but three Las Vegas casinos—simultaneously. Because why stop simply at being difficult when you can shoot for the impossible? To execute the plan, Ocean assembles a crew of nine supporting archetypes—plus Brad Pitt. Expect each member to be introduced here with a flourish and a quip.

Pitt plays Ocean’s permanently gum-chewing right-hand man. Matt Damon is a glum pickpocket with something to prove. Don Cheadle, a demolition expert with ambition that’s somehow thicker than his fake Cockney accent. There’s also Carl Reiner and Elliott Gould as two seasoned pros lured back for one last job. And then Casey Affleck and Scott Caan as wisecracking twins. Julia Roberts also shows up not as a member but as Ocean’s ex-wife—looking appropriately dubious about everything and everyone.

While this film is the definition of style over substance, it has style up the wazoo. It moves with the rhythm of a crisp card shuffle—quick, clean, and just distracting enough to keep you from trying to dissect how it’s all supposed to work. Steven Soderbergh directs this with a kind of winkless polish. He layers in montages and jazzy interludes, and his dialogue clips along like it’s in a rush to make the last call.

The movie’s fun is in the timing, the cutaways, and in the satisfied grins. Entertainment dressed in Armani, gone out for the evening, not at all interested in engaging in deep conversation. It’s undeniably clever. Maybe not clever enough to leave a lasting impression or make you feel particularly compelled to keep revisiting it. But for what it is, this stylish escape hatch has exactly what it needs for its ninety-odd minutes. A hand just strong enough to win the pot.

The stakes are high, but no one bothered to tell the cast. Ocean’s Twelve is a sequel that does things more or less the same as last time. That is, crime through the visor of a lifestyle brand—things like vintage suits, long lunches, and squinting coolly.

Theoretically, this movie would seem to insist, Danny Ocean (George Clooney) and his team are deeply in trouble. Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia)—whose casinos they cleaned out in the first film—is not happy. Not necessarily that he lost the money (it was covered by insurance), but that he got embarrassed. He has a simple demand: they must return what they took, with interest. If they don’t, then they’re dead. They have two weeks.

After pooling together what’s left of the stolen money, they’re still $38 million short. They regroup in Amsterdam to brainstorm, but mostly they stall. And then luck—or perhaps the opposite of luck—drops something in their lap: a Fabergé egg. It’s priceless, untouchable, and sitting in a museum like it’s waiting for them. Of course, it’ll be difficult to steal, but that’s a simple brainteaser for Ocean. The real problem is the source of the tip: a smug French thief known as the Night Fox (Vincent Cassel). He intends to steal it first.

That’s enough plot to count as one, but—as with Ocean’s Eleven before it—Soderbergh’s mostly interested in the intervals. Cassel slinks and somersaults through laser grids. Clooney and Pitt lounge on balconies, zipping out lines that sound well-practiced but not necessarily understood.

Julia Roberts gets the strangest subplot. Her character, Tess, just happens to look exactly like a certain Hollywood actress. Three guesses as to which one. (Julia Roberts.) The heist eventually calls for Tess to impersonate Julia Roberts—which, of course, means we’ve travailed deep into meta territory and are watching Julia Roberts impersonate herself.

The heist itself is sleek, but it’s treated mainly as a pretext for conversation and travel. By the time the story gets around to pulling itself together, the film’s already decided that the real prize was simply hanging out. Soderbergh directs like he’s coasting, and the cast seems perfectly fine with that. As for the audience, they’re most liable to be left swirling somewhere between admiration and jet lag.

Immortality ought to be the formula for cinematic dynamite, but here it’s just an excuse to play a special effect on repeat. A bullet or gash might slow an immortal for a second, but the wounds close up, the bullets slide out, and it’s back to clocking in for another session of stylized combat. Watching this movie is like watching a video game play itself stuck on “god mode.” Flawless, endless, joyless.

Charlize Theron stars as Andy. She’s the brooding commander of a centuries-old band of mercenaries. She carries herself in a distinctly detached manner—because wouldn’t you, if the universe forced you into eternal calisthenics? Stuck mowing down difficult-to-kill enemies while you yourself are next to impossible? But the movie eventually realizes it needs to establish some kind of stakes, so these immortals begin noticing that their bodies are starting to betray them. Mortality is catching up. Their wounds are healing more slowly. They have to start digging out their own bullets. Maybe, they realize, something might be able to kill them. But even with all this, in the film’s quieter reflective moments, they continue to fight in combat as if they’re infallible. Shouldn’t this movie concentrate on their newfound weaknesses and how to adjust? But no—that would require the movie to be thoughtful. While, sure, the combat choreography is impeccable and polished, it all feels rote and stale.

A dull villain doesn’t help. Harry Melling plays a pharmaceutical CEO supposedly bent on harnessing eternal life. Naturally, these immortals have the raw material he wants. But he doesn’t play the role like the sneering corporate overlord—he’s more like a petulant intern who found the keys to a biotech lab. Far more annoying than maniacal.

The immortality concept—centuries of memory, loneliness, history pressing down on each of their decisions—should be a terrific premise. And to be fair, the film flirts with those themes, but it always prefers the arsenal of bland action sequences. Highlander, while hardly a critical darling, did all this decades ago with more imagination, more danger, and yes, Queen on the soundtrack.

All things considered, I wouldn’t call this incompetent. The cast is strong, the production is sleek. Every so often it dabbles with a sharp idea or two. But in the end, its ideas vanish faster than its characters’ wounds. The Old Guard talks like an epic, but it plays disposable—just another property packaged and shoved in front of undemanding streaming audiences to consume and, hopefully, forget before an equally brainless sequel arrives.