I just watched this great movie for may the millionth time, but there’s something that stuck out this time. And yeah, I’m sure if looked really hard, I could find dozens of plot holes.
Danny has some task he’s supposed to do to further the robbery along. We’re never told what it is, but because he’s been red flagged, Linus has to do it instead. As it turns out, Linus has the task of playing the role of an NGC investigator. (All to get Benedict’s access code, and for some reason, get Frank fired.) Was Danny supposed to do this? Did he really think that Benedict wouldn’t recognize him, even though they’d just met a day or two before?
Maybe that wasn’t it. Later on, we find that Linus was supposed to be the one going down the elevator shaft to the vault. But before he does, he breaks into the room where, as it turns out, Danny has been locked in with a goon. Why would Linus do that? And how did Danny know to get thrown into that particular room? With a goon that turned out to be a good guy?
I don’t remember Linus breaking into any room with Danny in it. Danny is shown escaping the room while “his” goon acts out the punishment. Linus and Danny meet at the top of the shaft.
The version with George Clooney and Matt Damon. You know, the one that’s not crap.
I may have to watch it with a little more scrutiny, but it seems to me like Linus took out a ceiling panel and there was Danny, in the room.
But OK, maybe it’s different than the goon room. How did Danny get there? There were authentic goons outside of the room. Was there a secrect passage from the goon room to the elevator shaft? You’d think that wouldn’t be the case with the most sophisticated vault in the world.
Hey, I liked the origianal Sinatra/Martin/Davis Jr. version!
It was great to see the “old Vegas” casinos, and watch the obnoxious Rat Pack be the arrogant, sexist pigs they were in real life, on-screen. The original felt almost like a documentary, but with a silly plot. They filmed it while they were all performing here in Vegas, and you could see that they were often hung-over and still wired from the night before.
There are a few things in that movie that are problematic. For example, the cellphone slipped into Tess’s pocket. There’s no way of being certain that it would end up close enough to Andy Garcia at the right time.
And what if Tess had not followed instructions to watch the television in her room just in time to see Andy Garcia reveal his creepiness on camera?
Danny was originally supposed to break the vault. He would go into the elevator shaft, drop down, take out the guards, and blow the door. However, he screwed up by chasing Tess and making himself known to Terry Benedict. Once he was made and admitted it to Rusty, Rusty chewed him out and took him off the team. Linus said he could do Danny’s job.
Meanwhile, Danny pissed off Terry again. Terry’s goons locked him in a room with a bruiser whose name I don’t recall offhand. But Danny had already paid the bruiser off, and the bruiser helped him leave through the ceiling. How he got from the locked room to the elevator shaft is a handwave, but it can probably be assumed that employee-only areas are a little less tightly controlled. And infrastructure has to go somewhere, anyway. And Danny had already accessed the Bellagio’s floorplans, so he knew where everything went.
So Linus gets in the elevator and opens the car roof in order to climb out so he can drop down the shaft, only to find Danny already there. “Didn’t you trust me?” “I do now.” Right there, the whole thing is exposed as a test for Linus. I’m not sure if Rusty was in on Danny’s plan, but Danny had intended to be taken out of the game so that Linus would take his place and show whether or not he was capable of being a thief in Danny’s class, and that he could be trusted to do a solo job (steal the code from Terry and get into the elevator). Remember, Linus was a brand new thief who’d up till then only been swiping pocketbooks, and this was his first big, coordinated heist.
The movies are, in a way, more about Linus learning the trade than anything else.
Of course, from here you can argue about the sheer implausibility and improbability of Danny’s plan, but that’s how it played out.
Getting Danny red flagged and then pissing off Benedict was part of the plan (that was probably only known to Danny and Rusty) all along. That way, he’d be in the camera-less room getting beaten up by Bruiser. He’s now got an alibi (no cameras, Bruiser’s pretending to beat him mercilessly), as well as access to the mechanical spaces of the building. Whatever task the crew thought he had before that was meaningless - that was his plan all along. THat’s purely MHO BTW.
I don’t think anyone in the crew, apart from Rusty, knew that Danny had met up with Benedict before he was flagged. When Rusty realized Tess was part of Danny’s plan, he got pissed off, so Danny had to take him into his full confidence. It had to be their plan all along to have Linus be the NGC agent - why else recruit the best pickpocket in the business? Everyone else in the crew thought that was going to be Danny’s role, but he didn’t want them to know that getting his ex-wife back was part of his personal plan as well.
BTW, Linus was in the elevator, and was about to climb onto the roof to get access to the shaft when he looked up and was shocked to see Danny.
I came back in here to mention this. Rusty definitely knew about the plan when he took Danny out of the heist and put Linus in. The timeline goes:
[ul]
[li]Linus shadows Terry to learn his movements.[/li][li]Linus reports to Rusty and mentions the girl, pointing her out. Rusty recognizes her as Tess.[/li][li]Rusty grabs Danny in the warehouse. “Now we’re stealing two things [the money and Tess]. And when push comes to shove, and you can only take one, which is it gonna be? And remember, Tess does not split 11 ways!” “If everything goes as planned, I won’t be the one to make that choice. [Implication: Benedict will.]”[/li][li]Danny meets Tess in the restaurant, gets made by Terry.[/li][li]Linus snitches on Danny to Rusty. Rusty swaps out Danny for Linus.[/li][li]Danny goes to Tess again to slip her the phone. Terry sees Danny still in his casino and has his goons take Danny to the asswhupping room.[/li][li]Rusty uses the phone to give Terry the ultimatum about his money.[/li][/ul]Rusty knew about Danny’s plan to put Linus in as well as steal Tess when he confronted him, and even that might have simply been a show for the rest of the team and for the audience.
Getting Frank fired was just an excuse to have Linus, Frank, and Terry alone in a room together, in the secure area. During the near-scuffle, Linus picks Terry’s pocket for the security code. As they’re leaving, Linus says he forgot something in the room; Terry is in a hurry to get to the prize fight, so he lets Linus go back alone. Linus goes to the elevator and uses the access code to get in.
Meanwhile, Terry is pissed at Danny, and has locked him in a guarded room with Bulldog, who is supposed to be beating him up. But Bulldog is on Danny’s side, and acts out the beating to fool the guards outside while Danny climbs up above the false ceiling, or through some ducts, or something.
Linus opens the trapdoor in the top of the elevator, and there’s Danny waiting for him.
The big plot hole is a few minutes later. But it’s still a great movie.
I thought this was going to be about the flyers taken out of the vault and to the airport. Even the director admitted he had no idea where they came from.
Yeah, that’s pretty much the worst plot hole the movie commits. Everything else is handwavable, or hinted at in previous scenes. Other than the flyers, it’s a pretty solid movie.
The really great heist/con movies have more than one thing going on at once. There’s the part of the con that the audience is aware of, and the part where we get played along with the mark. The Sting did that brilliantly, and is probably still the gold standard for such films.
Maybe I’m stupid, or misremembering, but didn’t the crew carry them down to the vault when they were dressed up as the SWAT team? They go down to the vault with duffel bags full of flyers, switch them out for the ones full of cash (or switch the contents of the bags, since the ones with flyers had X’s on them), then walk out with duffel bags full of cash?
ETA: Shit, nevermind. Flyers were already on the remote controlled van when the SWAT team showed up, weren’t they?
Right, Danny, Linus, and Yen sent the fake bags up the elevator to where Terry’s goons were waiting to load them in the van. Once that transfer was finished, Terry sent his goons after the van and brought the SWAT team (Danny’s men) in to take the thieves. The SWAT team then took the money out while Terry was distracted.
It’s conceivable the SWAT team could have brought in the flyers that exploded in the vault, but the timing is extremely problematic and large bags would have been noticed on an assault team going in. It’s also conceivable that Danny and Linus brought in all the flyers, but we didn’t see any bags on them at all beyond the high-tech burglary gear.