Following Hollywood’s new trend of rebooting classic movie franchises rather than coming up with some original ideas, Oceans 8 sees Sandra Bullock gather a team to rob the MET Gala of a diamond necklace worth $150 million. Despite some glitzy visuals, this Oceans franchise reboot fails to shine.
By this point, heist films have been done, and something very new and exciting is needed to stop them being boring. Unfortunately, changing the gender dynamic wasn’t enough to save the plot from being very bog standard. I admit there were a couple of moments where I was mildly interested to see what would happen, but for most of the film I felt the action was flat and the dialogue was weak. Even now, I’m not sure if they were intending the script to be a comedy, but it was certainly no laughing matter.
I must say that, despite what most other critics are saying, I found Sandra Bullocks performance was incredibly boring. She was so relaxed and laid back that I completely lost interest in her character. Admittedly the rest of the cast were entertaining, and despite James Corden appearing out of the blue and feeling totally out of place, everyone else was fine. But here enlies the issue. Everyone was fine, the film itself was just fine. There was nothing about it that shouted “THIS IS INTERESTING, LOOK AT ME!” and no amount of snazzy editing or a questionable upbeat jukebox soundtrack could fix that.
What is perhaps most annoying is that I didn’t actually care if they pulled off the job or not. I felt that the characters would have 100% gotten caught if this was the real world, they act so suspiciously around security guards, and there were so many convenient occurrences that made the whole robbery seem totally implausible. I am a great fan of the Oceans franchise, and think that they are great exciting heist films with brilliant build ups and spectacular pay offs. This had none of that and instead of leaving the cinema feeling amazed at the ingenuity and technicality of what you’ve just witness, you instead leave shrugging your shoulders and thinking “huh, okay”.
I won’t say the film isn’t without some merits; it’s very colourful and the heist sequence is entertaining to watch. But on a whole the film falls very flat and I hate to say it, but really I was quite bored by it.
Daniel Robinson: From Reel to Real 