Oceans 8 Review

Oceans 8 (7/10)

Director: Gary Ross

Runtime: 110 Minutes

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I love the original Oceans trilogy, I felt Soderbergh was able to craft 3 incredibly enjoyable heist movies. It's pretty obvious by now that Hollywood is remaking loads of classic movies but replacing the men with women. This can either work or it doesn't, I appreciate Oceans 8 for not being a remake but rather a sequel. It's simply building on everything that's came before, it's more of what we've come to enjoy about these movies so if you didn't like any of the first 3 movies then you certainly won't find much to like about this one.

This time around we follow Danny Oceans sister, Debbie Ocean (Sandra Bullock). She's looking to pull of the biggest heist of her career, steal $150 million worth of diamonds concealed around movie star Daphne's (Anne Hatheway) neck. Before the pulls this off she needs a crew, a crew consisting of 8 females all carefully chosen for specific roles.

We rarely see Sandra Bullock in a lead role anymore so it's a breath of fresh air when we see her leading this heist. And oh does she do it well. One of my biggest joys of the movie was her, she was extremely likeable and determined to pull this thing off. The chemistry between all these character is brilliant, you can really see the friendship blossom throughout the movie. You really get a feel that Bullock and Blanchett have been friends for years, it is a shame that not every character is as fleshed out as I would have liked but I do see why that would have been hard considering the movies runtime. I'm not going to go into depth about every individual character like many reviewers have done because I don't think it's something that needs to be spoken about. If you've seen the trailer then you know every skillset every character has and how they play into the story. I will however say that it's so fun to see all these cast of characters come together and form a team. I especially liked how there's a little line thrown in that atleast tries to give an explanation to the audience about why it's only women working on this heist. I really appreciated the screenwriters for going that extra mile to write something like that into the movie.

Although Soderbergh only produced this movie his humour is still there. For anyone who's seen the original movies, Logan Lucky or Magic Mike. Then you know how unique and silly his style of humour can be. I definetely got that vibe here, watching them have to look at a diamond necklace for far to long that it becomes hilariously suspicious to everyone around them, all because they need to 3d scan it. There's even a scene where we see two of the characters trying out Tinder for the first time, in the midst of all this planning and we have two people swiping on Tinder. Now that is funny.

So how is the heist? The thing that everyone comes to see this movie for. It's incredibly engaging and riveting to watch, not in an action sense but in a Soderbergh type of way. Every character looks cool and slick as their plan works through each and everyone of them. It's just a shame that the heist never turns up the heat, there never seems like there's any danger that's about to happen as pretty much everything goes to plan with not even a small bit of it looking like it might not plan out the way they hoped. It's a real shame there wasn't any jeopardy to the heist, the movie might have really benefited if just for a moment the peril really ramped up,.

Overall there is a lot to like in this movie, otherwise I wouldn't be giving it a 7. The cast ensemble is great, I liked every single one of the actresses and felt the chemistry between them all was fantastic. Especially Sandra Bullock and Cate Blanchett, but Bullock is most certainly the stand out performance. It's very cliche and does nothing to reinvent the heist formula, but it is incredibly fun and has an upbeat tone that makes for a very enjoyable watch.