It would be easy to sneer at the new Ocean’s 8 as a typical modern studio “women’s picture”: which is to say, a gender-swapped variation on a franchise established by males. Added to which, Ocean’s 8 ticks a lot of stereotypical girly boxes: Glamour! Jewellery! Sandra Bullock! Met Gala!
There is more to come. Steve McQueen is currently finishing his crime thriller Widows, which sees four women (Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki and Cynthia Erivo) plotting to finish the heist their criminal husbands were killed trying to pull off. Is it an insult or a compliment to say heists are traditionally a man’s game? They are in real life, according to the FBI’s latest statistics. It’s equally so in the movies – and when women get in on the action, they’re often amateurs or silly little girls.
That is certainly the case with recent examples such as Spring Breakers, in which four teens are sucked into Florida thug life before they’ve even had time to change out of their bikinis. Or Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring, whose criminal nous didn’t extend beyond scanning celebrities’ social media to see when they were out of town so they could rob their houses. And ripe for a remake is 2001’s Sugar & Spice , in which a team of perky high-school cheerleaders embark on a series of armed heists wearing Betty doll masks. They’re almost given away when one witness spots their use of an illegal dismount. You suspect Danny Ocean would never be so careless.
Heist movies work best when there is a hint of realism. The Bling Ring was based on a true story. (One of its amateur crooks, Alexis Neiers, even got her own reality show). In its own way, so was 2008’s Mad Money, in which Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah and Katie Holmes hatch a plan to smuggle banknotes out of the federal reserve in their underwear, something else you can’t see Danny Ocean doing. Mad Money was adapted from a British TV movie, Hot Money, which was inspired a real-life gang; it only included one woman, but she did smuggle the money in her underwear.
Possibly the high point of this mini-genre, 1996’s Set It Off, was fictional, but its sisters in crime (including Jada Pinkett Smith, Vivica A Fox and, again, Queen Latifah), at least had credible motivations. With their histories of hardship, discrimination and exploitation, you believed these women had little to lose, and deserved something back from The Man. McQueen’s Widows looks set to mine a similar theme.
The same cannot be said of Ocean’s 8. But it could still represent a leap forward in feminine felony in that these women are pros. They’re master criminals, or mistress criminals – even the terminology is gendered. Bullock may be Danny Ocean’s sister but she is clearly capable of hatching a plot of her own. And her team have the skills – forgery, hacking, deception, manipulation – to pull it off. What’s more, their plot is not just about the money; it’s about revenge and the love of the scheme. Oh, and a chance to dress up and go to the Met Gala.
“Can’t we just go to this? Do we have to steal stuff?” asks Mindy Kaling. “Yes!” the others reply. That might not be exactly what #MeToo had in mind, but in its own morally dubious way, it’s a victory for equality, isn’t it?
Ocean’s 8 is in UK cinemas on 18 June
