Continuing the Ocean franchise, this time we have an all women team led by Sandra Bullock, who happens to be Danny Ocean’s (George Clooney) sister, out on parole after spending five years in jail on the charges of fraud. She comes up with a plan to rob a precious diamond necklace from a gala event and forms a gang of girls with exceptional individual skills to perform the extremely difficult task.
It all begins superbly with Sandra Bullock simply killing it in the first few scenes in jail followed by some quick intelligent con-acts setting a fine premise. However the promise made in these initial outstanding sequences remains unfulfilled in a too convenient heist film, missing those exciting, edge of the seat moments despite a stellar cast.
After spending the entire first half (hour) looking out for the girls and hatching a perfect plan, director Gary Ross leisurely comes to the actual event and then hurriedly sums it up without any major hiccups or obstacles unlike a well-made heist film. Further he continuous with some post-event predictable happenings too ending on a completely unsatisfying and uninteresting note.
So where the preparations remain engaging, the later story progression fails to lift up the film, which eventually results in a just okay one time watch with nothing fresh or commendable made on a set format. Thankfully it does have a fascinating cast ensemble with many known names (with an Indian link), but that still doesn’t give you any individual character to take back home impressed by her onscreen performance. Having said that, both Sandra Bullock and Anne Hathaway can easily be called the two big saviours of the film, successfully keeping you engaged with their respective lead acts.
As indicated by its promising trailer, OCEAN’S 8 delivers in terms of style, grandeur and beauty on screen along a superfine cinematography, editing and background score. But what it doesn’t deliver is a great heist movie exploiting a title as OCEAN’S 8.
A heist movie actually doesn't work when it all seems to be just a piece of cake witih many avoidable cinematic liberties. And that is the reason I would like to rate this as an average yet visually striking film, that isn’t as sharp and smart as it ought to be.
Ratings : 2.5 / 5
(P.S. - OCEAN's 8 frankly made me recall two of Amitabh Bachchan films that also had the sequences of a necklace robbery. They were SHAAN (1980) and KAALIA releasing one year later in 1981)
Tags :
OCEAN'S 8 Review by Bobby Sing at bobbytalkscinema.com, New English Movies Reviews by Bobby Sing, New Bollywood Movies Reviews by Bobby Sing, Heist Movies
