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For some strange reason, sequels have always been notorious for being lousy successors to the original work. Be it video games, movies or even books, plenty of sequels have been known to not live up to the original work. Plenty of sequels share on thing in common: they’d always be inferior to the original piece of work in one way or another and unfortunately, that formula holds true for Ocean’s Twelve (2004).

For those who don’t know, Ocean’s Twelve is the very aptly titled sequel to Ocean’s Eleven, a 2001 film (which I reviewed on this site previously) about how eleven men managed to pull of a heist, making all of them millionaires. However, the moment this film begins, Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia), the man from whom the original eleven stole $160 million from in the previous film, is on the hunt for Ocean’s eleven, eventually tracking all of them down one by one. He even goes so far as to detonate a bomb placed in Rusty’s (Brad Pitt) car as a warning. In the end, Benedict asks for all $160 million, plus $38 million interest and the eleven come up short by $97 million. Hence, they have no choice but to go back to their old ways, stealing valuable items to pay off their debt, but since their too “hot” to work in the United States, they travel to Europe in order to continue with their dirty work. However, as they are about to steal the world’s oldest stock certificate from an eccentric old man, they realise that they’ve been beaten to the document as it has already been taken by another thief who left them a message through an MP3 player. Soon, they discover that it was the Night fox (Vincent Cassel), a legendary European thief, who beat them to it. After which, the Night fox reveals that he is partially responsible for them being lured to Europe as he then proposes a challenge to the eleven: both them and the Night fox will attempt to steal the Corronation Egg within a week, if the eleven win, the Night fox will pay off their debt to Benedict. Hence, the team accepts the offer since there’s no other way for them to raise $7 million in a few weeks, which leads to even more twists and turns in the plot.

While the plot might seem quite interesting, it actually makes for a pretty boring movie on the whole. Most of the movie shows the team discussing rather than putting their plan(s) into action, which was more of what we saw in the first film. In fact, it almost feels as if the action is about to pick up when the team tries to steal the document and you’re on the edge of your sea, then when you realise it was all for nothing, you just sink back into your seat, getting bored with it and the rest of the film just doesn’t redeem itself. The plot is just sloppy with a lot of plot holes, like how the team suddenly got released when they were arrested by the police, and it just stinks of lazy writing on the whole. Not to mention the climax is practically non existed since there really isn’t much to get excited about even in the later parts of the film. By the time the movie ends, you’re probably stunned by the fact that the film simply ended the way it did, then you’d probably wonder why you wasted your time with it.

Still, not everything about the film is bad. If there’s one redeeming quality about it, it’s the acting. The original cast is back from the original film and they put on a great show here even with a broken plot. The ensemble cast still do a great job of portraying a team of professional thiefs who know what they’re doing every step of the way. Not to mention the few scenes in which we actually see the team in action are pretty exhilarating, such as one scene in which they need to raise a building to gain a clear shot through a window in the second floor. These scenes are what made the first film so great, it’s just unfortunate that the filmmakers and writers failed to see this, or else this could have been a great, if not better movie as compared to the original.

Still, Ocean’s Twelve (2004) didn’t do that bad in the box office, in fact it was a commercial success in comparison to other films. However, when you compare it to the original Ocean’s Eleven, it fell below expectations. If you were a fan of the first film, I’d suggest you don’t waste your time on this one, since it really is nowhere near as good as the original film was. Unless you’re a real die hard fan and can’t wait to see what happens to the team after the original film, this film might be worth a rent.

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“The first rule of fight club is, you do not talk about fight club. The second rule of fight club is, you do not talk about fight club.”

Fight Club (1999) is an intriguing movie which not only provides a refreshingly new plot, but also surprises and puzzles at every little turn of the movie. With an equally spectacular ending and finale, it is a brilliant film adaptation of a novel of the similar name.

Edward Norton stars as an unnamed narrator, telling the story from his point of view, about his life. The narrator is a simple domestic man, a slave to his job, which does product recalls for defective cars, living a simple, well-to-do life. However, he feels that his life is somewhat imperfect and undefined. As a result, he gets drawn to a materialistic type of lifestyle, where he thinks that he can define his success in life via his possessions, leading him to frequently purchase such extravagant furniture. Together the need of frequent travel due to his job, he becomes disturbed to the point that he suffers from chronic insomnia.

He quickly finds solace and “therapy” in the form of visiting various support groups which provide care and attention to those with terminal illnesses, fatal injuries and that sort of ilk. Through these groups, he feels the attention that he lacks in his usual life via meeting the people who are even more less fortunate then him, being addicted to these groups as a cure for his insomnia. However, when complications arrive, he finds himself unavailable to join these groups, and desperate for another solution, he meets a strange man by the name of Tyler Durden, played by Brad Pitt.

Tyler then introduces the narrator to the idea of a Fight Club, a club where a number of people who feel that they have lost their identity in the growing consumer world of today, and need an outlet to perhaps gain some form of healing in the form releasing aggression. The goal is to bring us back to our basic instincts, away from the complex world of today, acting as an eccentric form of psychotherapy to reduce the discomforts of the modern world. The story continues and follows these two men, and where the name of Fight Club might bring them into, escalating into a stunning storyline with a twist ending.

However, despite the originality of the movie, the complicated theme portrayed within the story would only appeal to a minority of people. The story deals the conflict that ordinary men today have with the consumerism lifestyle that our world is growing into, where one’s sense of success and meaning in life can only originate from their materialistic possessions, or so they think. These very mature themes, I’m afraid, would scare off the casual watchers, who would be confused about the meaning of several contexts within the film. In addition to that, Fight Club exaggerates the number of violent scenes in the movie, leading to much more gore than needed.

Despite having a plot which drives in a completely new direction, leaving the audience guessing to how the story would evolve, it is being offset by the mature themes brought forward in the film. This was probably the main result it failed terrible in the box offices, only doing much better in DVD releases. With a brain-bending plot and ending, Fight Club (1999) is still an excellent movie which would get an interested watcher grasping at the straws to understand the meaning behind every subtle action.

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