(Pitt has little screen personality anyway in Spy Game, he makes Robert Redford seem like a colorful eccentric.) Compare this to the sloppy, joshing repartee between Damon and Ben Affleck in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back-a film that in some ways has more in common with the original Ocean’s Eleven-to see what’s missing. When, in the remake, Brad Pitt trades information with Matt Damon, the colorless aspect of one magnifies the colorless aspect of the other, and there’s nothing passing between them except plot points. For better or worse, they barely break a creative sweat.

There just isn’t much you can do with the formula and Soderbergh and Griffin make it hip to be generic. Vampire movies come in different flavors modern westerns have learned to darken their archetypes disaster flicks vary according to the calamity but a heist picture is a heist picture is a heist picture.

But it also underlines the trouble with caper comedies. But Griffin (or director Steven Soderbergh) must have figured: “Who are we kidding? It’s Brand X exposition let’s make a joke of it.” And it’s a good joke-a postmodern, post-Mamet one. ” He could subsequently have written: “I owe you for saving my ass with the IRS at Caesar’s Palace,” or “I owe you for getting the rabbi’s wife out of my room after the goiter operation,” or something, anything specific. The writer, Ted Griffin, clearly needed to give Tishkoff a motive for the sake of narrative credibility I imagine him typing, “I owe you for the with the at the. That line is emblematic on so many levels. Early in the entertaining, instantly forgettable remake of Ocean’s Eleven (Warner Bros.), former casino owner Reuben Tishkoff (bare-chested Elliot Gould in a howlingly tacky bathrobe and boxers) explains why he’s helping the master thief Danny Ocean (George Clooney) plan a $165 million robbery of his old establishment: “I owe you for the thing with the guy in the place.”

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