Criminal Debbie Ocean (Bullock) looks to pull off the most audacious heist of her career: the diamonds worth $150 million from movie star Daphne (Hathaway). But first she needs to get together a crew.
★★★
Cate Blanchett has joked that the reason Ocean’s 8 earned its title is because there are actually only eight women working in Hollywood. But where the gender-swapped sequel to Steven Soderbergh’s early noughties crime trilogy doesn’t break from familiar heist-movie beats or raise the stakes, it more than makes up for that in cast chemistry and star power. It’s a breezy, enjoyable 110 minutes that feels human-sized in a summer of Wookiees and Indoraptors, and is all the better for that.
This time round, the action focuses on Debbie Ocean (Bullock), sister of the now deceased Danny (George Clooney). One of the film’s biggest joys is seeing Bullock playing a lead role. Just out on parole, Debbie is a career criminal — her nifty blag of cosmetics will be played out in Debenhams up and down the country — who has been planning to lift a $150 million necklace from the neck of celebrity Daphne Kluger (Hathaway on broad, movie-star bratty form) at the Met Ball for five years, eight months and 12 days. Bullock makes a believable hardened criminal without shedding her inherent likeability. She also gets to use her German ancestry to comic effect during the heist.
There isn’t a lot of time to etch rich characters, but the screenwriters smuggle in telling grace notes.
As is par for the heist-movie course, the team Debbie assembles is a motley crew of different skill sets and market-pleasing demographics. Cate Blanchett’s Lou, watering down vodka in the only nightclub to play clips from Jules Et Jim, becomes Debbie’s second-in-command. Helena Bonham Carter’s Rose is a washed-up fashion designer who scoffs Nutella from the jar and is hired to dress mark Daphne; Sarah Paulson’s Tammy is a former fence — her garage, full of washing machines and bikes, looks like behind the scenes at Argos — just trying to raise her kids in a nice house in the suburbs. Mindy Kaling’s Amita is a jewellery expert looking to get out of the clutches of her mother. Rihanna’s Nine Ball (“What’s your real name?” “Eight Ball”) is a spliff-smoking tech wizard who can hack anything, and Awkwafina’s Constance is a beanie-wearing pickpocket grifting in New York. The more numerate will have noticed this is only seven. The film has a surprise up its well-coutured sleeve.
How all these talents come together to overcome the initial hurdles is fun. Daphne’s refusal to wear the rocks, doing a 3D scan of the jewels without an online signal, and a clasp to the necklace that can only be underdone by a specific magnet all pose tricksy challenges for the group. As with Soderbergh’s Ocean’s films, there isn’t a lot of time to etch rich characters and explore relationship dynamics, but screenwriters Ross and Olivia Milch smuggle in telling grace notes — best of the bunch is Constance explaining the mysteries of dating apps to Rose. There is also a nice line in gender stereotype subversion; at one point, Debbie suggests, the group are “doing this for all the eight-year-old girls lying in bed dreaming of being criminals”.
When we get to the heist it’s an engaging mixture of unusual elements: toilet cubicles, spiked soup, Cate Blanchett in a doner kebab van and a bizarre coterie of celebrity cameos (Katie Holmes, Serena Williams, Maria Sharapova, various Kardashians/Jenners and the Winklevoss twins made famous by The Social Network). But what it doesn’t do is turn up the heat on its protagonists. While the heist-gone-wrong trope is cliché, Ocean’s 8’s robbery could have benefited from more jeopardy. Even when James Corden’s English insurance investigator (we know he is English because he is missing Arsenal in the Cup Final) turns up in pursuit of Debbie, the peril doesn’t really ramp up.
Gary Ross, a kind of Ron-Howard-a-like best known for Pleasantville, Seabiscuit and the first Hunger Games movie, mixes ’60s style (split screen, funky scene transitions, Daniel Pemberton’s groovy score) with a more ’70s vibe (it’s zoom lens a go-go) but doesn’t bring the loosey-goosey flair of Soderbergh.
But there’s lots to like, most of it coming from its movie star ensemble. Blanchett is cool personified, Paulson probably has the most to do (she has a run-in with Vogue editor Anna Wintour cooing over Roger Federer), Awkwafina is a lively presence, and Rihanna effortlessly erases the memory of Battleship. By the time they are strutting in full Met Gala finery to These Boots Are Made For Walkin’, it’s hard not to root for them. There is something refreshing about seeing a group of women thrive on their wits, guile, smarts, cunning, proficiency and chutzpah rather than sex. It’s just a shame they weren’t tested even further. They could have handled it.
Plot-wise Ocean’s 8 cleaves closely to the tenets of Heist Movie Lore but does little to enliven or tweak the formula. It lacks the jazzy swagger of Soderbergh’s trio but delivers a fun, likeable romp built on the charm and charisma of its cast.