My Review of "Ocean's Twelve"

Ocean's Twelve was a highly anticipated sequel that came out in 2004. In the early 2000's these heist movies were quite popular and this was probably one of the movies that helped build the popularity of this genre. The first movie was a blast and I was a little hesitant for this follow up. Though the first movie did hint at this sequel. It just didn't go the way I had expected it to.

The movie starts up with a flashback. In some ways it's kind of similar to the first movie where we had Danny and Tess's love story being the catalyst for the whole movie. This movie introduces us to Isabel who is Rusty's counterpart. She is sort of the catalyst much as how Tess was for the first movie. Unlike Tess, Isabel is a detective and she's quite good at her job. Her job is to find and apprehend people just like Rusty. There we kind of build that cat and mouse relationship between the star crossed lovers.

Surprisingly, the whole cast is back from the original movie. Even the main villain, Terry Benedict, is involved. Though, we have a new main villain this time around by the name of Toulour. This new villain isn't doing anything for profit. He just merely has a huge ego and wants to be known as the best thief in the world. Although this wasn't the angle I was expecting in this sequel, I actually liked this concept. I loved this concept only because I can see how much potential this concept can build. This world of thieves with codes and honor could have been built up similar to how John Wick's world was built. I don't know if they ever had any ambition of this but we now know that people would be on board if they did.

There are a series of thefts and they get more and more elaborate. I liked this because that is a fun element that they only dabbled with in the first movie. They leaned more into this and it's part of the story because they keep throwing twist after twist on us while they do it. That's part of the fun with this movie. If you've never seen it before it's a fun ride to see where they're going to go.

The one hindrance to these twists is that they are kind of predictable. I'm sure if you've seen the movie already you won't get as much satisfaction watching it a second time. These twists are pretty big so I don't think you really forget where they're going to go. Still for a first time viewer I think you can have a great time with this.

I like that this movie on occasion breaks the fourth wall and becomes very self aware of what it is. You can tell the writers for this movie were having a great time thinking of ideas to throw into this movie. Not all of it lands but the parts that do are pretty fun.

One other thing that kind of lands right but not for everyone is the cameo appearances and reliance on pop culture knowledge. Fortunately, I understand pretty much everything that was going on and who the players are but twenty years later some of this knowledge isn't so common anymore. New people watching this might not get some of the references or who the cameo appearances are. This doesn't ruin everything but there's an extra spark of fun that comes in knowing these things.

Overall, I did have a good time with this one but I found that there wasn't as much replay value with this one as opposed to its predecessor. Still if you've seen the first movie and then go to this it does feel like an natural extension of the first movie. You'll still have a great time and that's why I have to give this movie a 6 out of 10.