Namely, rob three casinos in Vegas that have a shared vault. Ocean, what do you think you would do if released?” The little crinkle in Clooney’s eyes tells us all we need to know–he has a job planned. The parole board leader asks her final question of the scene: “Mr. Ocean is immediately cool and charismatic in the opening scene, where the viewer inhabits the point-of-view of his parole board, and yet the last thing we want is for Ocean to stay on the straight and narrow when he is set free from prison. Normally a film with thieves and liars in it puts them in the “villain” category, but from the very beginning, the audience of Ocean’s Eleven is rooting for Danny Ocean (George Clooney) and his crew. Told from the criminal viewpoint, a group plans and executes an elaborate robbery. So I’m going to take a couple of posts to discuss how Ocean’s Eleven fits the Caper tropes as laid out by.
I teach it as the opening every semester of my Film Analysis class, and I love pointing out Soderbergh’s design to the students and watching their eyes get wide as they realize there’s another way to look at movies other than passively.īut ultimately I use it to exemplify a film that is plot-focused, and a caper (also known as a heist) film is a great way to do that, because they’re all about what happens next, and all of the characters are more or less just meant to have specialized skills and look cool.
