HEIST PULLED OFF WITH POISE

EARLY every successful heist movie, just like a heist itself, functions by obeying a formula.

First comes the set-up and backstory (typically involving the righting of a wrong to lend the subsequent lawbreaking a veneer of moral justification). Next up: the assembly of the team (diverse in skill and, ideally, ethnicity).

That’s followed by planning – to lay out what should happen – and execution, which by necessity must go at least a tiny bit awry. The misstep is inevitably due to human error and rectified by human improvisation.

The coda reveals a satisfying twist, delivered in flashbacks to those parts of the crime that we have not been shown.

By those lights Oceans 8 is a dutiful (if, at times, also cheeky) heir to the franchise that began in 2001 with Steven Soderbergh’s reboot of the original Ocean’s

11, a suave exemplar of a maledominated lineage that runs from the noirish Rififi (1955) to

Nlast year’s country-fried caper flick Logan Lucky, also by Soderbergh.

What lends this genre outing more than a touch of topical interest is the female-centric cast, headed by Sandra Bullock, and including a lively band of actresses in supporting roles.

Like the gender-flipped Ghostbusters before it, this new movie neither reinvents not dishonours its inspiration, instead adding a modicum of zip – if less than turbocharged horsepower

– to a vehicle that runs you through the staging of a crime by, ironically, obeying all the traffic laws.

Bullock plays con artist Debbie Ocean, who, as the film begins is being released after a five-year stint in prison for running a scam.

The sister of George Clooney’s Danny Ocean, the mink-oil-slick grifter who headlined the previous three Ocean’s films – and who, we quickly learn, is recently deceased – Debbie has hit upon a plan: steal a $150 million (R2 billion) diamond necklace during the Met Gala, the splashy annual fundraiser of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute.

Crime it seems is not only in her blood – despite her protestations to the contrary to the parole board – it is also the only way she knows how to pay the rent.

Nevertheless, it manages to score a political point or two… eight in fact. – The Washington Post

TRIED AND TESTED: The cast of Ocean’s 8 stars Sandra Bullock and a bevy of strong supporting actors.