Do You Want To Own A Casino One Day?

George Clooney (Danny Ocean in the movie) begins the movie by being paroled and immediately hatches a criminal plan to rob a three casinos in Vegas. The owner of the three casinos Bellagio, Mirage, and the MGM Grand, Terry Benedict was dating Danny Ocean’s wife, Julia Roberts (Tess in the movie).

In Ocean’s 11 Andy Garcia played the role of Terry Benedict, a high speed casino owner. It started when Matt Damon was giving Brad Pitt a description of who Terry Benedict is. I loved the way Matt depicted Benedict in this scene, he said and I quote “that guy is a machine.” You can watch that scene again here.

There was a scene about him being out by 7:30 coincided with the clock on the wall perfectly. It tells you that Terry Benedict timing is impeccable. A very well disciplined man and gives the impression that you have to have these qualities to own a casino. They also exaggerated a bit because Benedict was the owner of the 3 biggest casinos in Vegas and all these casinos shares 1 vault.

The part about Benedict speaking 4 different languages gives me the indication that learning to speak different languages increases your intellectual capacity and ultimately makes you smarter. Andy Garcia actually didn’t know how to German, Italian and Japanese, he just found someone to teach him how to say a couple of words just before the scene for the movie.

“He remembers every Valley’s name on the way in, not bad for a guy worth 3 quarters of a billion.” This scene here is like Rudyard Kipling’s poem, ‘If”. “If you can walk with kings and not lose the common touch; you will be a man my son.” Again, a very powerful depiction of the challenge they are embarking on, which is trying to rob Benedict’s vault.

Time management and attention to detail of Benedict. He hits the casino floors at 7:00 on the nod and spends 3 minutes with his casino manager. He likes to be in control and there is rarely an incident he doesn’t know about, and/or handles personally.

Then Matt Damon just summarized the whole thing for us with this phrase, “this guy is smart, as he is ruthless.” The last guy they caught cheating in Benedict casino was sent to jail for 10 years. Benedict had the bank seize his house and bankrupt the poor guy's brother-in-law’s tractor business. If you are not afraid of Terry Benedict now, then I don’t know what shakes you.

After Matt said that, he sounded afraid but Brad played it off with a joke in the end. He asked Matt, why, are you afraid? Matt answered, are you suicidal? Brad jokingly said, only in the morning.

The scene ended with Tess coming down on the stairs. She came down the stairs in this powerful red outfit, the glide in her strides and the dip in her hip, man-o-man, the writer of the screenplay was a genius.

I think most of the movie could be understood in this scene alone. Now, that movie is no longer on Netflix for free. If you want to watch the whole movie, you may have to rent it on YouTube for $3.99 or buy it for $14.99.

In the end, Danny Ocean and his team succeeded in robing Terry Benedict's casino vault. In doing so, he was also able to win his wife back. A very good movie overall and I keep going back to it to watch it over and over again. Great story line.

This is the first movie review I did based on a short clip in the movie. Let me know what you think? Also, if you like it and would like to see more movie reviews like this, like and share it to encourage me.