Is this the most valuable franchise in film? Will it last for a decade?
I like Soderbergh. I even like him when he has no goal in the world but making money through simple entertaining.
I like him because he actually thinks about film. About the bullets the towels. The phrases and melodies.
Superficially, this has two overt components. One is the well established con form. The strict version is that we don't fully understand what is going on and "see" it only at the end. Then it all makes sense. This is a weaker version where we see some of the plotting and problems. This is where the jokes are.
The second overt component is simply coolness. Its the sort of coolness that Apple-inspired ad editing has given us, in opposition to the heavy rap-gangster intimidation-coolness of the last great sales cycle. This is referenced within the movie with a bit about an all American black jumper (with a Jewelled flag on his teeth). Its colorful, fast. The pace is translucent with the music. Vegas Cellophane. The actors are cool. Even Matt Damon, who knows cool, plays uncool with coolness.
But its the technique here that impresses. Shots have shape and how those shapes are modulated (as they usually are not) and then assembled with those shapes forming new ones, is a matter of unique style with this filmmaker. Look at how fertile soft ends are punctured by sharp beginnings so that the very passage of time in the eye here is a matter of conceptual copulation.
Look at how many shots end on one of those colored artificial flavors and create a romantic movie at the atomic level as if a John Coltrane was compressing a thousand easy ballads into a few moments. This takes knowledge and the filmmaker has to actually operate the camera to pull this off. It was in his "Limey" and not in the other Ocean's.
And it takes an editor who knows. The best editor was found fresh off "Babel" which among other variations, had the three segments vary on shotshape assembly. This matters. This is a five diamond film, yes?
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.
