Other members of the team, including Helena Bonham Carter as a down-on-her-luck fashion designer, and Sarah Paulson as a thief turned suburban mom who now runs a Vitamix-running black market scheme out of her garage, are great concepts that never seem to be able to overcome the limp dialogue given to them on paper. She is, in a surprising but not at all unwelcome way, the MVP of the film Awkwafina’s skateboarding pickpocket also injects some much-needed loosey-goosey energy into the mix. One of the film’s more brilliant moves is having Anne Hathaway play that actress, whose hammy cravenness gamely sends up every public opinion about her. The scheme involves getting a narcissistic actress to wear it to the Ball, and a series of elaborate maneuvers to sleight-of-hand it off her and replace it with a fake. But in its actual form, it doesn’t feel like much more than a thrown bone.ĭebbie’s idea is to steal a priceless diamond necklace using the glitzy excess of the annual Met Gala as cover. The idea that this diverse group of women would all have a reason to want to rip off the system feels like some kind of elaborate wish-fulfillment fanfiction. The film has intrinsically been proposed as more than just a fun summer heist movie it’s a symbolic balm for all the ills of a male-dominated Hollywood that have dominated the news for nearly a year. Illuminated by an extremely hype cast - Bullock, Cate Blanchett, Rihanna, and ascendant rapper Awkwafina, among a few - it’s been primed to represent a cross section of the possibilities of female glamour in 2018. The deck is stacked so incredibly in 8’s favor that this feels like an algorithmic improbability. Unfortunately, by the time she’s ready to set out on the central heist, the film has lost most of that steam. Grifts are hot right now, and these low-stakes scams - just a steely-faced Bullock willing her material life back into place - are where the film feels the most energized. Wearing the same slinky black number we later find out she was arrested in for art-trade fraud, she hits up Bergdorf’s and waltzes out with a security-tag-adorned new wardrobe she impersonates her way into a posh uptown hotel. Some people are born to con, the film tells us, and the impulse in this case seems to be hereditary. Ocean’s 8 opens with a familiar setup: Debbie Ocean, sister and inheritor of her brother Danny’s con-person mantle, is let out of prison on parole, and despite all her earnest proclamations about wanting to start an honest life, doesn’t miss a beat getting right back into the game. From left, Sarah Paulson, Sandra Bullock, Rihanna.
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