Ocean’s 8 (2018): Ladies Just Wanna Have Fun

Looking at a lot of male oriented heist movies – such as (taking a random sample) Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven, Ocean’s Twelve and Ocean’s Thirteen series of movies – it seems that the guys pulling off the job are having a pretty great time of it. Ostensibly it’s about the money, but it’s always something more than that. For Danny Ocean (George Clooney) in Ocean’s Eleven it’s revenge. For the rest of the gang, money may have been the initial bait, but after that caper – in which they each got around $15 mill – Danny and the boys do it because they like it. Oh sure, the plot of each picture manufactures other reasons, but let’s face it, those reasons are awfully flimsy. Really, it’s just the joy of pulling the thing off.

As it turns out, women want to have fun, too. And why not? Don’t we all? In real life, we had the late19th century stagecoach robber Pearl Hart; in the 1930s, we had restive Bonnie Parker, who preferred banks, and worked with a guy named Clyde; and more recently , with a career spanning the1950s until her most recent arrest just last year, there’s the indefatigable jewel thief Doris Payne (now 87).

Here, our fun comes from a very entertaining movie, by turns funny, clever and suave. With a predominantly female cast and perspective, Ocean’s 8 offers a somewhat different approach to the caper film: there are no fist fights, no car chases, no guns, and no explosions. There are, however, glamour, ingenuity, beauty, and more than a little manipulation of the opposite sex. The magnetism of its stars and smart pacing keep us interested; writer-director Gary Ross - Big (1988), Seabiscuit (2003), The Hunger Games (2012) - knows how to engage an audience and move things along.

To commit a heist – especially a major one such as the job envisioned by ringleader Debbie Ocean (Sandra Bullock) in this new film - in which she hopes to steal a one-of-a-kind $150 million diamond necklace in the midst of New York’s Met Gala, perhaps the poshest, most celebrated social event in the world – one needs a detailed plan. A blueprint not just for how to do it but also how to deal with any flies in the ointment, contingencies that might screw things up land one back in the klink. For as Robert Burns put it, The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft a-gley.

As in Ocean’s Eleven, the story in Ocean’s 8 begins with a parole hearing for the chief protagonist – Danny Ocean in the first movie, Debbie Ocean in the new one. Debbie has been locked up for over five years, during which she came up with her grand scheme and painstakingly worked out the details.  She says that for the first three years, she kept getting caught [in her mind] for one reason or another and made adjustments accordingly.  Over the last two years, no matter how she imagined it, the plan always succeeded. Now its perfect, or so she believes.

At her parole hearing, Debbie acknowledges complicity in the fraud for which she was jailed, but explains that it was actually inadvertent: she had been in love, so she thought, with a bad guy. She was just along for the ride, she says. Now, says she, the lesson has been learned, and she wants nothing more than a simple, ordinary, honest life. Her notorious brother Danny is dead, and she would never, ever try to follow in his felonious footsteps. The parole board buys this.

 As soon as she’s out, of course, Debbie is off and running with her new plan.

We get the obligatory scenes showing Debbie assembling her team. First, she recruits former partner, Lou (Cate Blanchette), who has been living off the low-end fraud of watering down liquor at a tavern, but who still needs a little convincing. Together they make their pitch to the rest of the crew, one at a time: There’s Rose, a formerly voguish, ditzy fashion designer played inimitably by Helena Bonham Carter. Then there's Amita (Mindy Kaling), a jewelry maker, who is glad to go on an adventure that may provide the means to finally get away from her mother. Next is a brilliant and hip computer hacker who calls herself Nine Ball (Rihanna, in a surprisingly cool performance); Constance, a pickpocket and sleight-of-hand artist played by rapper and up-and-coming actress, Awkwafina; and Debbie’s old friend Tammy (Sarah Paulson) a former fence, who is trying to live the suburban lifestyle with a husband and kids, while still dealing stolen goods out of her garage. Finally, there’s Anne Hathaway, in a terrific, sly performance as society fashion plate, Daphne Kluger, who gets dragooned into the plot as a key player, albeit without her knowledge. Not a bad cast, eh?

As a bit of a bonus and an order to add some verisimilitude to scenes at the gala where the real action occurs, we get cameos by a number of celebrities such as Heidi Klum, Kim Kardashian, Katie Holmes and Common.

There are some other notable men as well. Elliot Gould briefly reprises his role as Reuben from the Soderbergh/Clooney films. Richard Armitage (The Hobbit trilogy) is featured as an art dealer/con artist called Claude who somehow combines the qualities of handsome charmer, evil slimeball, and hapless dupe. British comedian and Late Late Show host James Corden shines as an insurance investigator brought in after the heist to try and determine whodunnit. And there’s Shaobo Qin as “The Amazing Yen”, whose role I can’t describe without spoiling the plot (so I won’t, other than to say his exploits also feature in Ocean’s Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen).

The scheme is pretty nifty, and the action is in the build up to and execution of the heist and how the protagonists – especially Bullock, Paulson and Carter - deal with unexpected twists and turns along the way. It’s not exactly edge-of-the seat stuff, but it is engaging and thrilling.  As in most films of this genre, one has to suspend disbelief a bit. Yet this picture sweeps the viewer along in such a merry Hollywood style that I, at least, was happy to be swept. There’s nothing crude or mean spirited here, unlike the less successful Soderbergh “comeback” heist movie Logan Lucky last summer.

All-in-all, Ocean’s 8 is a fun summer popcorn movie.

1 hour 50 minutes     Rated PG-13

Grade: B+

In general release