Ocean's 8

Ocean’s 8, directed and co-written by Gary Ross, is a film about eight women trying to pull off the biggest jewel heist in history - at the Met (museum) in New York City. Leading the gang is Debbie Ocean (Sandra Bullock), sister to Danny Ocean (George Clooney, who isn’t in the film) from the Soderbergh films. Debbie just got out of prison, where she spent five years planning this heist. Now she gathers together her team, played by actors like Cate Blanchett, Sarah Paulsen, Helena Bonham Carter, Rihanna, Mindy Kaling, Awkwafina and, later, also Anne Hathaway. Ocean’s 8, in other words, is a film about women. Women don’t usually pull off heists, and I assume this is a film that’s supposed to draw attention to the lack of films featuring women in such roles and do its part to counter that lack.

But here’s the thing: Ocean’s 8 only really got entertaining for me when James Cordon got involved in the last quarter of the film. Cordon plays John Frazier, an insurance investigator who knows the Oceans all to well. Every minute of Ocean’s 8 with Cordon in it was more entertaining than all the minutes without him. I consider that a huge fail on the part of the writers. The problem isn’t that Cordon outshines the women as an actor. He is very good, but so were all of the women, especially Bullock and Blanchett (as Debbie’s partner). The problem is that Frazier is just a better-drawn character than the ones the women play (whom I’m not even bothering to name), and his lines snap the way all the lines should have snapped. The only other male actor of note was Richard Armitage, but he didn’t fare as well.

The entire film needed to snap and flow instead of meandering along with some scattered fun scenes between the women (the best involving Bullock and Blanchett). And by the time we get to the twists that are mandatory for the end of every heist caper, they almost made me yawn because of their lack of originality and boring delivery. 

And what was with the change of date at Danny Ocean’s grave marker: At the beginning of the film it read 2017; at the end it was 2018, which no one else seems to have noticed?

Thanks to Cordon, Ocean’s 8 was worth a look and there was just enough fun along the way to slide over into ***. My mug is up, but, again, just barely.