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Ocean's Twelve

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Ocean's Twelve
File:Ocean's12Poster1.gif
Directed bySteven Soderbergh
Written byGeorge Nolfi
Produced byJerry Weintraub
StarringGeorge Clooney
Brad Pitt
Matt Damon
Catherine Zeta-Jones
Andy Garcia
Don Cheadle
Bernie Mac
Julia Roberts
Music byDavid Holmes
Distributed byWarner Bros.
Release dates
December 10, 2004
Running time
125 min.
LanguageEnglish
Budget$85 - $110 million

Ocean's Twelve is a 2004 film that takes place after the events of the 2001 movie Ocean's Eleven. Like its predecessor, the film is directed by Steven Soderbergh and stars George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, and Matt Damon. The film was released in the United States on December 10, 2004.

The film is rated PG-13 in the U.S., 12A in the United Kingdom, M in Australia and PG in Canada. As with the first film, there is no sex, violence or strong subject matter and it was the inclusion of a few choice sexual swear words uttered in a non-sexual context that upped the film to a more commercial rating. A sequel, Ocean's Thirteen, is set to follow in June, 2007.

Tag line: Twelve is the new eleven

Cast

Plot synopsis

Template:Spoiler At the opening of Ocean's Twelve, the eleven members of Ocean's Eleven are living their lives separately off the fortunes of their Vegas casino heist in the first film. Terry Benedict (Garcia), the owner of the three casinos, confronts each member of the team in turn, demanding the team return his money, with interest. Benedict gives the team two weeks to come up with the money, which amounts to the original $160 million plus $38 million interest for a total of $198 million. The Oceans Eleven members don't have enough and are short 97 million which they must get in 14 days or they are "dead men".

Ocean and the team decide to stage another heist to pay off the debt. Being too hot to work in the United States, they pick a European target: the world's oldest stock certificate, which was issued by the Dutch East India Company in 1602, and is kept in Amsterdam. Ocean's Eleven manages to breach the security around the certificate, but a rival thief, the "Night Fox" (Cassel), beats them to the document.

As it turns out, The Night Fox is the one who revealed the identities of the Eleven to Benedict. The Fox is incensed that his mentor, the retired thief Gaspar LeMarc (Finney), failed to correct a businessman who claimed that Ocean's Eleven casino theft as one of the best thefts ever committed. The Fox breaks "rule number one" (revealing another thief's identity) in order to lure the team to Europe, where he can propose a challenge: the theft of a Fabergé egg. Both Ocean's Eleven and the Night Fox will attempt to steal the famous Coronation Egg within a week; the first to succeed will be declared the better thief. If Ocean's team wins, the Fox will pay off the team's debt. With no other options, Ocean accepts the challenge.

Meanwhile, a Europol detective, Agent Isabel Lahiri (Zeta-Jones), hears of the increased theft activity in Amsterdam. She forges her superior's signature on a request form in order to procure enough resources to track down the Eleven. Eventually all eleven members are captured, but are released when Linus' mother, masquerading as a U.S. official, manages their extradition.

Later, at the Fox's home, he delights in explaining how he was able to steal the egg. Ocean then reveals the truth: the contest was over before it began, and the egg that Fox stole was a fake. Ocean and associate Rusty Ryan (Pitt) had previously visited LeMarc and learned the location of the real egg: traveling by courier to the museum exhibition. Using a scuffle to stage a distraction, the team steals the egg in transit and replaces it with a replica, however they go through the motions of a museum heist to throw off the Fox's surveillance. The Fox is crestfallen, and Ocean gets the money that The Night Fox had given to LeMarc to hold in confidence when the competition was first proposed.

It is not until the end that the viewers realize that LeMarc was actually the mastermind behind the entire operation. By deliberately making the Night Fox feel inferior to Ocean's Eleven, he manipulates the Night Fox so that he enters into a competition with Ocean's Eleven. This is "the solution to all our problems" that he alludes to in the meeting with Daniel and Rusty. The Night Fox is the mark, and Ocean's team are essentially the pawns of LeMarc. Their task is to acquire the egg relatively simply, and then get caught. This convinces the Night Fox that he has won, although the contest is just misdirection. Another goal of LeMarc is to be re-united with his daughter, Agent Lahiri, who had thought her father had died over a decade previously.

The result of the entire adventure is that Ocean's Eleven is now in the clear with Terry Benedict; the extraordinarily talented Night Fox is disgraced (both in fortune and in reputation), and LeMarc is reunited both with his daughter and with the Fabergé egg he had stolen years earlier. This illustrates the artistry of LeMarc, and why he is regarded so highly amongst those who perform the long con; This is the reason LeMarc is so apologetic to Daniel and Rusty, and he claims "I'm still getting the better of you" at the end of their meeting.

Running gags

This film is considered a form of metafilm. One of the running gags in the film and an example of the metafilm idea is Frank's character, played by Bernie Mac. In both movies Bernie Mac's character likes to have both manicures and pedicures with nail polish in nail salons. Another running joke is that other characters remark that Tess Ocean bears a striking resemblance to a famous person who is not mentioned until near the end of the film (Julia Roberts). In one scene, Linus talks with Rusty and starts to say "Don't you believe Tess looks like. .." and Rusty stops him before he can say more, simply replying "look, it's not in my nature to be mysterious, but I can't talk about it and I can't talk about why." To take the joke further, Tess later impersonates her; this breaks the fourth wall, as Tess is actually played by Julia Roberts. This is brought home when Julia Roberts, playing Tess, is complaining about the Julia Roberts role she is expected to perform and tells Matt Damon's character, Linus, "No, you're playing a role, I'm apparently playing a real person!" When the group encounter Bruce Willis (playing himself), Bruce gives Tess (impersonating Julia Roberts) his mobile phone to call her house, and the "real" Julia Roberts picks up the phone at the house. To take it one step further, the film's credits read "and Introducing Tess as Julia Roberts."

Matt Damon also breaks the fourth wall, when in reference to Julia's career, he says to Bruce Willis "You know, that little Oscar statue on the mantle starts smirking at you after a while. You know what I mean?" to which Bruce Willis replies: "Not really, Glen, no." Matt Damon shared a Best Original Screenplay Oscar with Ben Affleck in 1997 for Good Will Hunting, while Julia Roberts won a Best Actress Oscar for Erin Brockovich in 2000, another movie directed by Steven Soderbergh. Willis has yet to win an Oscar.

Another running gag is despite the fact that Yen only speaks Mandarin, most of the characters seem to be having little to no problems understanding him. Benedict even converses with Yen in Mandarin when confronting him.

Yet another running joke continued through both Ocean's Eleven and to this movie is that Brad Pitt's character, Rusty, is eating some sort of food in nearly all of his non-stunt scenes.

In each film so far, Oceans Eleven and this one, whenever Daniel Ocean winds up in prison he is wearing a formal dinner suit, leading to his release from prison where he must again wear the dinner suit.

Like the first films use of a series of oddly named cons, this film mentions the "swinging priest", "crazy larry", "soft shoulder", "baker's dozen", and "hell in a handbasket", none of which are described except that "baker's dozen" requires a woman and "hell in a handbasket" requires a trained cat.

Template:Endspoiler

Production

File:Villa Erba.JPG
The Villa Erba on Lake Como, the filming site of Francois Toulour’s (The Night Fox's) estate.

The filming of Ocean's Twelve took place at many locations worldwide, including:

Posters

Reception

In spite of extremely high box office expectations and a promising opening weekend, Ocean's Twelve was not a very big box office hit, at least not compared to Ocean's Eleven. The movie grossed about $125 million in the United States. Ocean's Eleven made about $184 million in the same region, and $444,200,000 worldwide in its entire box office run. Ocean's Twelve grossed only $351,331,634 after its worldwide theatrical run.

The film was criticized for its complex plot and a final twist that negated much of the preceding action. The Washington Post's Stephen Hunter said that "it all ends on one of those infuriatingly sloppy notes where, having dramatized narrative events WXYZ for us, which we have taken on good faith, it suddenly and arbitrarily delivers narrative events STUV, which completely invalidate events WXYZ."[1] (Alfred Hitchcock's Stage Fright received similar criticism).

The film won a BMI Film Music Award with the recipient going to David Holmes. The film was nominated for several other festival awards.

Soundtrack

The original soundtrack to Ocean's Twelve was released by Warner Bros. Records on December 7 2004. David Holmes returned to compose the music for the film and won a BMI award. His songs "Amsterdam" and "I Love Art. ..Really!" were released as singles and do not appear on the commercial soundtrack. The soundtrack is also absent of the music used during the Nightfox "laser-dance" sequence in the film. The clip is from a track called "Thé à la Menthe" performed by La Caution, according to the film's end credits. The track titled "The Real Story" is different on the commercial soundtrack than it is in the film.

Track listing
  1. "L'Appuntamento" by Ornella Vanoni – 4:35
  2. "$165 Million + Interest" (into) "The Round Up" by David Holmes – 5:43
  3. "L.S.D. Partie" by Roland Vincent – 2:59
  4. "Lifting the Building" by David Holmes – 2:34
  5. "10:35 I Turn Off Camera 3" by David Holmes – 2:25
  6. "Crepuscolo Sul Mare" by Piero Umiliani – 2:44
  7. "What R We Stealing" by David Holmes – 3:21
  8. "Faust 72" by Dynastie Crisis – 3:23
  9. David Holmes - "Stealing the Stock" (into) "Le Renard de Nuit" (4:53)
  10. David Holmes - "7/29/04 The Day Of" (3:11)
  11. Yellow Hammer - "Lazy [Album Version]" (4:30)
  12. John Schroeder - "Explosive Corrosive Joseph" (2:33)
  13. David Holmes - "Yen on a Carousel" (3:13)
  14. David Holmes - "The Real Story" (2:55)
  15. Dave Grusin - "Ascension to Virginity" (5:05)
  16. David Holmes - "Untitled" (1:02)

Total Duration: 54:04

Additional notes

  • Matt Damon's character quotes the lyrics to the classic Led Zeppelin song "Kashmir" in a scene with George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and Robbie Coltrane. The other three men say seemingly nonsensical phrases, and Matt Damon doesn't know what to say on his turn, so he quotes the song, saying, "Oh let the sun beat down upon my face, stars to fill my dream, I am a traveler of both time and space, to be where I have been."
  • The sequel was based on and produced spec script by George Nolfi called Honor Among Thieves that was originally intended to be directed by John Woo.
  • The music Benedict plays on the piano when he comes to visit Basher is called "Requiem for a Dead". It was written and performed by Andy Garcia.
  • The real Coronation Egg by Peter Carl Fabergé was made in 1897 and is kept in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. It was bought in 1979 for $2.2 million by the Forbes Magazine Collection and was on display in New York — along with eight other eggs and 180 miscellaneous articles by Carl Faberge — for 25 years. On February 4, 2004, Russian oil tycoon Viktor Vekselberg bought the whole collection back for Russia for about $90 million. The 1897 egg was valued at between $18 and $24 million. The replica seen in the film was made by the jewelers Vivian Alexander and is worth over $4,000.
  • When he meets Tess at the Rome hotel, Bruce Willis asks about Danny. Julia Robert's husband's name is Danny Moder. Linus also refers to Tess as "J-Ro".

Reference

  1. ^ "An Uneven 'Twelve'". Stephen Hunter, The Washington Post.
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