Movie Review—Ocean's 8

by Peter J. O'Connell

Ocean's 8. Released: June 2018. Runtime: 110 mins. MPAA Rating: PG-13 for language, drug use, and some suggestive content. 

In 1960's Ocean's 11, Frank Sinatra as Danny Ocean masterminded the robbery of Las Vegas casinos. It took 40 years, but the movie eventually became a “franchise” with Ocean's Eleven (2001), Ocean's Twelve (2004), and Ocean's Thirteen (2007)--all directed by Stephen Soderbergh and starring George Clooney as Danny. Now in the era of female empowerment in Hollywood, director/co-writer Gary Ross brings us Ocean's 8, with Sandra Bullock as Danny's sister, Debbie, and an all-woman team recruited by her for a heist. 

The heist that Debbie, newly paroled from a prison term for art fraud, has in mind is both spectacular and particularly suited for an all-female crew. It is the theft of a $150 million Cartier necklace from the year's premier social event, the Costume Gala at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. Debbie's plan is to have the Met Gala's co-host, snobbish, airheaded actress Daphne Kluger (Anne Hathaway), wear the necklace but steal it from her and substitute a zircon duplicate.

To carry out the caper, Debbie gathers her diverse, talented team: Lou (Cate Blanchett), her former partner in various crimes; Rose Weil (Helena Bonham Carter), a once noted but now down on her luck fashion designer; Amita (Mindy Kaling), a jewelry maker; Nine Ball (Rihanna), a computer hacker; Constance (Awkwafina), a street hustler and pickpocket; and Tammy (Sarah Paulson), a suburbanite who sells stolen goods out of her home. Later Nine Ball's sister, Veronica (Nathanya Alexander), is brought in to disable a special magnet, carried by bodyguards hired by Carier, that prevents the necklace from being removed without the magnet's being activated. 

Debbie, cool and efficient, gets the heist plan going (as well as a secondary one involving revenge against Claude, played by Richard Armitage, who ratted her out in the art fraud case). Lou is a solid second-in-command, and the remaining six put their skills into play. They get the necklace onto Daphne, whose nearly orgasmic reaction to wearing it is quite amusing, and she attends the Gala, surrounded by various celebrities as themselves, including, of course, Kim Kardashian. And, also of course, a number of highly improbable events have to take place for the caper to succeed. Do they and does it? And, too, there are a number of surprises that will take place. Can you guess what they will be?

Whatever your answers to these questions, Ocean's 8 will provide you with a steady, though not particularly intense, degree of enjoyment from the beauty and stylishness on display by the cast and settings. The movie is an entertaining, though hardly powerful, exercise in female empowerment.