Ocean’s 8

If Danny Ocean could only see his sister now!

A spinoff of a remake of an old Rat Pack movie, Ocean’s 8 follows Debbie Ocean (Sandra Bullock), the sister of Ocean’s 11’s main character Danny Ocean, as she is released from prison after five plus long years, only to put together a heist that needs, you guessed it, at least seven other people to pull off. Immediately recruiting her ex-girlfriend. Lou (Cate Blanchett), to the cause, Debbie sets out to fill up the remaining spots on her team. Composing of a jewelry maker named Amita (Mindy Kaling), an “out of the game” mom named Tammy (Sarah Paulson), a street hustler named Constance (Awkwafina), a hacker named Nine Ball (Rihanna), and a disgraced fashion designer named Rose (Helena Bonham Carter), the team sets out to steal a near priceless diamond necklace from a ditzy celebrity named Daphne Kluger (Anne Hathaway) during this year’s Met Gala. With her squad ready to go and her master plan finally in motion, will Debbie’s heist succeed, or will the Ocean criminal legacy be ruined by a botched attempt at stealing something that is, in theory, unstealable?

I don’t know why or when the idea of an all-female led Ocean’s movie came about, but I’m sure glad it did. Not only are the Ocean’s movies some of my favorite heist films out there, but they’re usually great as pure entertainment and don’t take themselves too seriously while still giving the audience fun characters to attach themselves to and clever plots to keep everyone involved interested. Luckily, and much like the trilogy that came before, Ocean’s 8 delivers on all of the above with only a couple hang-ups that bring the final product down a few notches.

We’ll start with the good first: the female cast is great, so anyone who has a problem with this change can move right along! That being said, I was a bit skeptical myself when I saw that the franchise was dropping the dudes in favor of its final cast, if only because I don’t like the idea of gender swapping roles just for the sake of doing so. I want the characters and situations to do these gals justice in the way they deserve, to have a unique and new take on an already established franchise instead of a rehash, reuse and recycle sort of approach.  After walking out of the theater, I’d have to say that the filmmakers were able to accomplish this task for most of the runtime, but still inevitably fell into the trap of giving us more of the same.

But that doesn’t mean that more of the same is a bad thing. Both sequels to Ocean’s 11 did just that, but again, and as with the rebooted female led Ghostbusters that came out a few years ago, the filmmakers seem almost afraid of giving us something truly new and different to enjoy with the entirely new and different cast at their disposal. I understand that they need to circle back to what made the franchise a franchise to begin with, but why not try something else? You’ve already wiped the slate clean by axing pretty much all of the original cast (save for one miniscule cameo), so why not take it a step further and buck the character tropes introduced in the originals and go for broke? As it is, this film plays both ways: as a brand new and interesting entry point into the world, but also as a continuation that plays it way more safe than I was expecting.

The best part of the film is by far the central heist that is just as inventive and fun as the previous installments, centering on the complicated act of stealing a diamond necklace. Unfortunately, the script meanders when it comes to giving us what we want to see, and its focus wavers trying to balance all of these characters, a coherent story, and the many twists and turns in between. I do appreciate the entire back half of the film that pivots from the heist to another angle that we really haven’t seen in the franchise before, so kudos for bringing this new element to the table, which is exactly what I was expecting and wanting when I saw that this reboot was going into production.

All that being said, the script lives and dies by these new actresses and the characters they play. Sandra Bullock is great as Debbie Ocean, giving the role just enough likeness to Clooney’s character to show us that criminality runs in the family. Sarah Paulson, Mindy Kaling, Awkwafina and Helena Bonham Carter stand out the most because they aren’t rehashes of any character that’s come before, and are able to stand on their own even if the script should have given them a little more to do outside of being cogs in the heist machine. Anne Hathaway is also great and the most fleshed out of the bunch since the heist revolves around snagging the necklace from her persons, all the while making sure that she doesn’t catch on with all the scheming and planning going on around her. And while Rihanna’s character is obviously integral to the story, she doesn’t bring enough to the character to do anything memorable with the role and could have easily been replaced with any other actress that would have played the part to the same effect, if not better. My biggest gripe character-wise has to be Cat Blanchett’s Lou. She’s basically a straight rip-off of Brad Pitt’s character from Ocean’s 11 right down to the snappy back and forth dialogue between her and Bullock that the filmmakers try to (unsuccessfully) recreate. She even has the habit of chewing on something in every scene much like how Pitt always had something to chow down on in the same way. For shame, especially with an actress of her caliber in the role!

While not as good as the original remake, Ocean’s 8 is on par with both of its sequels and does just enough to warrant being made in the first place. The new, all-female led cast is mostly great, and the central heist is entertaining, but the film seems to be at odds with what it wants to be; either a more safe version of what came before, or something totally different than what’s been tried with the franchise, but either way, the filmmakers settle for something right in the middle that hurts the film more than helps. This franchise deserves to keep going, especially with the new cast, so here’s hoping for an Ocean’s 9 sooner rather than later.