Ocean's Twelve - 4K Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

Ocean's Twelve



Movie:
4K Video:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:



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Movie
After the massive box office success that was 2001’s Ocean’s Eleven remake, Soderbergh was most certainly called on to make a sequel nearly instantaneously. Thus 3 years later Ocean’s Twelve comes out, only to fizzle pretty badly at the box office (comparatively, as it made almost $100,000,000 less than it’s predecessor on a higher budget). Personally I couldn’t remember almost anything of the plot of the film going into this review and I was racking my head why I couldn’t really recall anything. The original is a classic, I remember the 3rd film, and I still have the taint of Ocean’s 8 burned into my memory to this day, but some odd reason I wasn’t recalling the 2nd film. Well, after watching the movie I now understand why. Coming hot on the heels of the 1st film, Ocean’s Twelve manages to pull off something amazing. It just so happens to be the most rote and bland film of the entire franchise, and as a result is nearly completely forgettable.

The film picks up 3 years after Danny Ocean (George Clooney) stole $163 million dollars from Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia), as well as his ex wife Tess (Julia Roberts) back from the casino owner as well. Just as Benedict promised, he has finally hunted down every single member of the Ocean’s 11 crew and given them an ultimatum. Pay him back all $163 million PLUS some nasty interest, or he would kill each and every one of them.

The gang gets back together and pools the money they have left from the millions stolen, but it’s not nearly enough and they’re dead broke beyond that. Rusty drained all of his money into a series of hotels, Danny has most off his, but the rest has been squandered away on frivolous stuff by all the crew. Deciding that the United States is too hot for them right now due to the fact that they’re the most wanted thieves in U.S. history at the moment, Danny and Rusty turn their gaze toward Europe. There they can pull off a massive artifact heist, get enough money to pay back Benedict, and get back to their lives.

Only problem is, there’s more than one thief at play. Turns out the famous French thief known as the Night Fox (Vincent Cassel) also has his eyes on the same prize as the Danny’s crew. And to make matters worse, he wants to make a game out of who is the best thief. Add in the fact that Rusty’s ex girlfriend, Detective Isabel Laihiri (Catherine Zeta-Jones) catches wind of their plot, and soon it’s a race of “thief against thief against time” for the artifact.

The film plays the same basic premise of the first movie, but adds in ton of side stories and a whole mess of double backs and secrets by the director to the point of everything becoming a bit of a muddle mess. On one hand we have Detective Laihiri closing in on everyone and the sexual tension between her and Rusty, then there’s the addition of Tess to the team for a last minute con (thus going from 11 to 12 members), and by the time we add in Vincent Cassel’s Night Fox things have gotten over bloated. To make matters even worse, there’s ANOTHER sub plot with an even more famous thief who turns out to be the long lost father of the Detective.

On one hand I sort of like the idea of Ocean’s Twelve. The idea of two master thieves is incredibly fun, and has been done perfectly in films like The Pink Panther etc. The only thing is that Soderbergh decides to go full bore “European” with the vibe, incorporating filming techniques of Fritz Lang and William Friedkin 1970s films to the point that it lost the feel and tone of the original. But the biggest frustration comes from the fact that Soderbergh uses the entire film as a decoy, unveiling at the end that everything that went on wasn’t what REALLY went on, and the entire thing was a decoy while our characters did something completely different behind the scenes. Ocean’s Eleven mildly played with that sort of misdirection 3 years prior, but it was very minimal and blended in seamlessly with the rest of the story. Here it feels like the entire store was simply a blind while he info dumped on us everything that ACTUALLY happened in the last 10 minutes. It feels a bit cheap and sort of weakens the stakes of everything that happened earlier.

There are some positives though. The cast are still firing on all 4 cylinders, and the whole “Julia Roberts and Bruce Willis” meta gag was hilarious. Having Tess play Julia Roberts in real life was actually pretty clever, especially since the whole meta pop culture phenom hadn’t really hit mainstream just yet. So at that point in time it actually came across as clever.




Rating:

Rated PG-13 for language




4K Video:

Much like the first film, Ocean’s Twelve is given a huge HUGE face lift in the form of a brand new 4K remaster and a huge increase in the bitrate thanks to no need to cater to HD-DVD’s limited space back in the format war years. The got the same hands on treatment from Soderbergh that Ocean’s Eleven did, and the end result looks generally fantastic. The film is heavily graded in Steven Soderbergh fashion, with the heavy yellow and amber hues that he’s known for. But instead of the green and blue tinges of the first film it leans much more heavily Sepia all around, with a few splashes of “day for night shot photography” blue, and the typical Soderbergh yellows. I did notice massive improvements on textures and details all around, but the film still has that heavily blown out look in certain scenes, giving the faces and skin tones a very white blanched look. Judging by my old Blu-ray and this new remaster I’m concluding that it was something that Soderbergh did intentionally, or was simply an artifact of the filming style, because it’s present in the Blu-ray, the DVD and this new remaster as well. All in all, a great looking disc.








Audio:

I gave the first film a good score for the audio, but the second film kicks things up a notch, especially in the bass department. Dialog is crisp and clear as usual (albeit some of the accents are a bit wonky) and surrounds are incredibly active. Supposedly this new audio remix (yes it’s a remix not simply using the original master than the lossy DD 5.1 mix used) was supervised by original sound editor Jerry Blake, and it is SO much more than the mediocre lossy track we’ve had for years. Bass is tight and punchy, and adds a good bit of weight during the heist scenes. It still is not THE most bassy movie out there, but according to what I could ascertain from interviews and some blog posts by Jerry Blake, it was never really intended to be so. Overall this is a huge upgrade over the anemic 5.1 Dolby Digital track of old and well worth the price of admission.







Extras:

• Audio Commentary with director Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter George Nolfi
• Ready, Jet Set, Go: The Making of Ocean's Twelve
• HBO First Look: Twelve is the New Eleven
• Deleted Scenes

Final Score: ​

Ocean’s Twelve is easily the weakest of the trilogy (or quadrilogy if you count the all female Ocean’s 8) by a decent margin, and for good reason. Soderbergh takes some serious risks in changing up the format of the film, and not all of them pay off. There’s a delightfully “European” vibe to the film, but fooling the audience the entire film sort of cheapens things along with the overly bloated sub plots that keep the movie from feeling trim and lithe. It’s not a bad flick, but just not the best either. The Warner Brothers 4K UHD disc looks and sounds great though, once more easily outclassing the aging Blu-ray set by a goodly margin. Worth an OK watch for most, but a solid buy for fans.

As a heads up, I have linked to the Steelbook edition (which is also used as the top poster) due to the fact that I have reviewed the Disc from the 4K Trilogy set and the only way to get the single is via the steelbook (discs are identical, packaging is the only difference).



Technical Specifications:

Starring: George Clooney, Matt Damon, Andy Garcia, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, Bernie Mac, Don Cheadle, Vincent Cassel
Directed by: Steven Soderbergh
Written by: George Clayton Johnson, Jack Golden Russell, George Nolfi
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 HEVC
Audio: English: DTS-HD MA 5.1, French (Canadian), French, German, Italian, Spanish (Castilian), Czech, Japanese DD 5.1, Spanish (Latin) DD 2.0
Subtitles: English SDH, French, German SDH, Italian SDH, Japanese, Spanish, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Mandarin (Traditional), Norwegian, Swedish
Studio: Warner Brothers
Rated: PG-13
Runtime: 125 minutes
Blu-Ray Release Date: April 30th, 2024

Recommendation: OK Watch

 

[Todd Anderson]

I haven’t watched this one - can’t say I’m inclined to give it a spin :-/

 

[Sonnie Parker]

I agree it was the weakest... hard to beat the first one, but I still enjoyed it. Lots of good actors.

 

[Todd Anderson]

Hmmm... well, Sonnie, you're saying its worth watching?

 

[Sonnie Parker]

I think so... as Michael says... it's an okay watch.