Review: Ocean's 8

Like the crimes they depict, a well-planned heist film requires a range of elements to come together in harmony. For a long while these elements were pretty well known - a colourful cast, a complicated plan, an exciting location, various outside factors that could throw things off balance and so on. But in recent years heist movies have discarded some of the core features of the genre. It hasn't been an improvement.

Fresh out of jail after almost six years, Debbie Ocean (Sandra Bullock) has promised to go straight. Straight back to her con artist ways, more like it. But this time she has a big score in mind: she wants to steal a $150 million dollar Cartier necklace from the neck of movie star Daphne Kruger (Anne Hathaway) during the glamourous Met Gala ball. But first she and her partner in crime Lou Miller (Cate Blanchett) have to get the necklace on Kruger's neck - and for that they're going to need a team.

So far so good, especially after a fun opening where Ocean (sister of Danny from Ocean's 11) cons her way from fresh-out-of-the-joint poverty to New York glamour in a single day. The crime crew are colourful, the stakes are high, the plan is complicated enough that we can be sure there are a few wrinkles that'll shake out further down the line, and then...

The best heist films know that the heist itself isn't enough: something somewhere has to go wrong. We might want to see the bad guys get away with it, but we also want to see them work for it - there's no story in a film where a plan works out exactly the way it's planned. The big problem with Steven Soderbergh's recent heist film Logan Lucky was that it had no serious bumps in the road: this film might be a spin-off from Soderbergh's earlier Ocean's films, but director Gary Ross seems to have had that later example firmly in mind.

So with any serious plot twists off the table, the appeal here should come from seeing a bunch of likable characters get what they deserve (or screw over some bad guys). But there are no real bad guys here; it's pretty much a victimless crime. Worse, the film never bothers to establish that anyone here deserves their vast take-home haul - it's telling that for at least half the crime crew we're never even given an idea what they might want the money for.

This lack of depth runs throughout the film: aside from Debbie and Lou, everyone gets a single character-defining quirk and that's it (Lou doesn't even get a quirk, but she does get some snazzy outfits). Given a bit more room to play with, the cast might have filled that gap - all the performances are great - but it's a heist film, so much of their screen time is spent whirling around going through the motions to separate a necklace from a neck.

Bullock and Hathaway get the two largest roles, and the film might have been better if they'd swapped; Hathaway is funny and likable, while Bullock keeps it all locked down. But Hathaway also benefits from actually getting to play a character; Debbie Ocean is a blank, and where George Clooney got to fill Danny Ocean with smug masculine charm, Bullock's driven professionalism offers little to grab onto.

Ocean's 8 is a polished product with a stellar cast. It just never figures out a good reason why we should care about anything that's happening. Of course, with a bunch of movie stars on screen looking glamourous, sometimes flair is enough. But when you've got Cate Blanchett in your film, would it hurt to give her something to do?