Ocean’s 8

Here’s a brain teas­er to file along­side why cats always land on their feet and why Milky Way bars always come in pairs: why, oh why, was Gary Ross employed as writer and direc­tor of the caper spin-off fea­ture Ocean’s 8? Who, up there in the high tow­er, thought this was a good idea? You spend some time assem­bling a who’s‑who cast of pre­mi­um female tal­ent, you jug­gle a bunch of sched­ules, you secure the approval of fran­chise over­seer Steven Soder­bergh, you hard­wire your prop­er­ty direct­ly into the pro­gres­sive zeit­geist, and then after all that, you hire an anony­mous jour­ney­man to bring this shiny dream to life.

Ocean’s 8 com­pris­es a unique oppor­tu­ni­ty, in that heist movies tra­di­tion­al­ly tend to involve men doing the rob­bing – females are usu­al­ly ush­ered in as love inter­ests (cf Julia Roberts in Ocean’s Eleven) and, cer­tain­ly in old­er films, they often bite the bul­let. Yet it might be tech­ni­cal­ly incor­rect to refer to this as a heist pic­ture, as, per exam­ples in cin­e­ma and lit­er­a­ture, heists are extreme­ly dan­ger­ous and intri­cate. Plus, the odds of them going pear-shaped are high. Here, the per­il lev­els are per­haps equiv­a­lent to cross­ing a qui­et sub­ur­ban street at 4am in the morn­ing. It’s less like a heist, more like a group of well-dressed peo­ple car­ry­ing out their dai­ly, thrill-neu­tral affairs.

This is unfor­tu­nate, as it feels like Ross hasn’t got the guts to give his char­ac­ters flaws, lest it appear as if he is some­how taint­ing this clutch of strong, empow­ered women. In this respect, it not only comes across as a sto­ry that’s com­plete­ly lack­ing in dra­ma, but one that is lack­ing human char­ac­ters – in their place are immac­u­late­ly sculpt­ed man­nequins who glide through the motions and just stum­ble into suc­cess. But the disin­gen­u­ous, super­hero-like char­ac­ter­i­sa­tions are only part of the problem.

The heist mount­ed by Deb­bie Ocean (San­dra Bul­lock) is the prod­uct of five years in chokey – and a few months in soli­tary – just play­ing every angle over and over in her head. She’s got names, num­bers and a ball­park esti­mate of the even­tu­al pay­off. Along­side sev­en cohorts, she plans to nab a 6lb Carti­er dia­mond neck­lace being worn by Anne Hathaway’s mis­cel­la­neous celeb diva Daphne Kluger at America’s most exclu­sive par­ty, The Met Gala (which, per the film, looks like an off-sea­son hen par­ty at a retail park All Bar One).

The team nev­er real­ly break a sweat, and Ross doesn’t seem inter­est­ed in show­ing how they over­come var­i­ous unseen obsta­cles. As a spec­ta­tor, Debbie’s com­plex escapade is far less impres­sive than the off-the-cuff grift she pulls off in the open­ing min­utes when, mosey­ing from the prison gates in a cock­tail dress, she clev­er­ly makes off with a stash of make­up from a depart­ment store. (Side note: would a female writer have sent Deb­bie direct from prison to a make­up counter?) Any­way, it’s a love­ly lit­tle moment, and per­haps the only exam­ple in the film of an inter­ac­tion that is only pos­si­ble because the par­ties involved are women.

Else­where, the cast do the best with what they’re giv­en which, frankly, is mea­gre scrap­ings. There must be some kind of under­ground Hol­ly­wood tri­bunal or crim­i­nal court for wast­ing Cate Blanchett in a movie. If there is, Ross would be sen­tenced to mul­ti­ple life sen­tences. She hasn’t got the time for stuff like this. Movies need her for more impor­tant busi­ness. Her char­ac­ter, Lou, is intro­duced as a club own­er who dreams of dri­ving down long beach roads on her motor­bike, and beyond that, the only mem­o­rable moment she has is when she wears some red leather slacks.

At the time of writ­ing, the film has been finan­cial­ly suc­cess­ful, so the inevitable ques­tion aris­es: should we be gird­ing our loins for the sequel? Were it to hap­pen, the mak­ers would sure­ly have to start from scratch with these char­ac­ters, as we’re giv­en so lit­tle rea­son to want to hang out with them again or, indeed, to bask in their suc­cess. Soder­bergh is an avowed devo­tee to ​’60s crime movies, and you get the strong impres­sion that he ingest­ed the entire canon before embark­ing on his ini­tial tril­o­gy. It seems like Ross, on the oth­er hand, did lit­tle more than scan that morning’s Vari­ety and had his assis­tant work out some demo­graph­ic and mar­ket­ing projections.