As a golden oldie for late night entertainment with a group of youngsters, Ocean’s Eleven, Stephen Soderberg’s 2001 remake of Lewis Milestone’s 1960 rat pack original, is a fair-to-middle-ing option, a super-heist movie with a super cast, topped by George Clooney, who robs a high security vault and gets beaten up without ever a hair being out of place – but that’s super-stardom for you. Because I have been reading Robert D. Hare’s book about psychopathy, Without Conscience, I couldn’t help but recognise the symptoms in Danny Ocean (Clooney’s character): glib and superficial; egocentric and grandiose; lack of remorse or guilt; deceitful and manipulative; need for excitement; lack of responsibility… Danny Ocean ticks off more than a few of the tell-tale symptoms on Hare’s psychopathy checklist. I shall do a separate post about Hare’s book in due course, but I have been deeply impressed by the apparent ubiquity of the condition, which does not necessarily lead to morally compromised roles such as the one Clooney plays.
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