The Millennium in Frames: Ocean's Eleven and The Fast and the Furious Flaunt Their Way Through 2001
The Millennium in Frames is our close-to-chronological look at the most important, influential, popular movies since 2000.
You know what’s cooler than a hero walking away from an explosion in slow motion? A group of heroes walking away in slow motion. Cool comes with a collective—that’s a life-fact, friend.
Consider this the “Yeah!” Rule: What’s the coolest part of that particular Usher song? It’s the first line, when Usher sings, “I’m in the club with my homies!” It’s the coolest part to mouth along with and break it down with and party up with, because it implies that you’re among people you love and respect, and those people love and respect you. That idea makes you feel cool. Thus, things are cooler when they’re delivered by a group instead of a lone wolf (though, side note, lone wolves are still cool because they invite mystique and questions from others, which satisfies the group dynamic the “Yeah!” Rule needs, though in a less satisfying way).
Go back and watch Ocean’s Eleven and The Fast and the Furious and the first thing that jumps out is that, oh yeah, they’re both still effortlessly, undeniably, forcefully cool movies. Now, they’re cool in different ways and cool for different people, but they both bring a sheen so slick, so loose, so cross-armed lip-curl confident that they remain a total blast to watch. They’re innocent and simple-minded, but they’re both eternally significant for the franchises they launched and, yes, the brands of cool they legitimized in the new millennium.
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Ocean’s Eleven cannot age. Nothing about it in 2016 is even a little bit worse than it was 15 years ago (even Don Cheadle’s gleefully terrible cockney accent, which was already bad and is still bad, isn’t worse than you remembered—thankfully). The set pieces are contained and smart and the cast—oh man, the cast—is still a twelve-cylinder engine of douchey smiles and cocky eyebrow raises. Peak George Clooney meets a Finger-Licking Brad Pitt meets a Pre-Masshole Matt Damon and Casey “Gunnin’ For My Big Bro” Affleck. Plus Cheadle. Plus Bernie Mac. Plus a Topher Grace cameo. Plus Julia “Here to Give the Women What They Want Except an Exchange Between Me and Literally Any Other Woman” Roberts. You wave that roster in front of execs for a movie coming out next year and they tell you to come back when you’re sober. That’s like the Steroid Era of movie casts.
The stunning amount of star power is intrinsic to branding the movie with its specific cool insignia. Rotate in a Will Smith or a Michael Peña and this movie is cool in a different way (it’s probably more like The Fast and the Furious’ type of cool, which we’ll discuss in a moment). Rotate in a Jennifer Lawrence or even a Rosario Dawson for the Julia Roberts part and it’s again a different kind of cool. Yes—Ocean’s Eleven is cool in the way Ocean’s Eleven is cool because these specific people came together to rob casinos, be smarter than you, and in Brad Pitt’s case, eat messy foods. Without this lineup, Eleven looks like something else entirely.
As it is, Ocean’s Eleven is cool in the way your affluent single uncle is cool. He’s super educated and dresses well and if he slops mustard on his lapel at the baseball game, he slides it off with his thumb and sticks his thumb in his mouth. These are the people who go to the Kentucky Derby and don’t even pretend they’re there to bet on horses. They slug mint juleps and hit on girls in big hats and stagger their way back to the Uber. Then, when they make it back to the hotel, it’s revealed that—by the way—they took everyone’s wallets. Time to extend the party into the night. Someone call American Pharoah.
There are no pretenses in Ocean’s Eleven. Clooney and Co. are stealing because they want to chase the money. That’s it. There’s no dying child who needs money for her chemotherapy and there’s no Boys & Girls Club that helped one of the crew make it off the streets when they were a kid. In the end, we celebrate a successful heist because it made everyone really effing rich. It’s irresponsible and unimportant, but the whole thing is so funny and clever and sharp that you can’t say they didn’t earn the money. Take the price of admission; the movie deserves it.
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The Fast and the Furious has nobler intentions in mind. If Ocean’s Eleven didn’t care about presenting its characters as scoundrels, Furious wants you to ride or die for Dom and his crew, even if—and here’s the key—Dom and his crew would be the scoundrels in any other movie.
Furious is cool in a sense that it’s so intensely 2001 that it comes across now as classically old-school. The cars are dated, the clothes are dated, and our good friends Vin Diesel and Paul Walker are almost startlingly baby-faced. The soundtrack is a time capsule of “remember when this was popular?” hits, from Limp Bizkit’s “Rollin” to Ashanti’s “When A Man Does Wrong.” Also, there are five—I swear—five Ja Rule songs in this movie. It’s repugnant, but at the same time, it couldn’t be better. The Furious franchise is made up of time capsules regardless.
It sounds like a very 2016 thing to say, but it’s notable enough to emphasize: Furious’ multiracial approach to casting was effing brilliant. Brilliant. And it must have been a huge risk. Imagine walking into a movie studio 15 years ago and saying you want to bank an action franchise on a minority-majority cast. We’re going to have Asian characters outside of a martial arts movie. We’re going to have black characters outside of a buddy-cop movie. We’re going to wash the whole thing with Latin undertones. Finally, the crux of this whole thing is going to be street-racing. Not only are they criminals, the stars here are intentionally unglamourous criminals. They strain. They sweat. They’re grimy and greasy and they keep their hairstyles high and tight. They aren’t worried about breaking the law; they’re worried about the cops. There’s an important difference there. It’s unimaginable how this was okayed. It’s so good this was okayed.
The Fast and the Furious is cool because it feels like it doesn’t come from Hollywood. It feels like it comes about 90 minutes south of there on the 110. The actors all bring the charisma and charm and by the end, you aren’t just hoping Vin Diesel and Paul Walker slip away clean, you want the same for Michelle Rodriguez and Jordana Brewster and Johnny Strong. For all the Furious movies harp on in regards to family and love and community, they have a way to make you buy in. That’s what ultimately sets them apart from the criminality of the Ocean’s movies.
Take the Furious cast and plug them into the Ocean’s Eleven plot and you still have a movie. It’s a super compelling experiment and it gives you an utterly different flick in terms of approach and tone, but one way or another you can picture Dom’s crew taking Vegas. The reverse just can’t be said about Clooney and Co. Those guys, except maybe Casey Affleck, wouldn’t be caught dead at a street race. Too much potential for shoe-scuffing, you know? That’s sort of too bad, but it speaks more to the incredible nature of the Furious franchise than it does any specific weakness of the Ocean’s movies. After all, the former has an eighth movie on the horizon; you can’t make it that far without some adaptation, flexibility, and some risks hitting pay dirt. Eleven spawned a franchise too, but there’s a reason it tapped out after three rounds with the original players. Meanwhile, Furious hasn’t even decelerated.
Ocean’s Eleven leans into star power and follows a formula all the way to the money, while The Fast and the Furious guns the Nos and floors the pedal and white-knuckles the wheel on a bank-bound quarter-mile. These movies are durable and easy and almost impossible to dislike. Don’t flip the look and don’t bash the methods—cool as a collective is still in style.
Next time, we’re calling in Denzel. It’s Training Day.