Most Rewatchable Scene
Super Bowl scene; explanation of the con
In the discussion (23)
Approx. transcript time · 00:38:18Read transcript
- The segment opens by saying there is an obvious winner but the candidates will be walked through.
- The opening hotel-bar scene recalls Out of Sight; the whole movie has an Out of Sight vibe with Soderbergh color schemes and a retro jazz-ish soundtrack.
- The hotel-room shakedown where Will Smith isn't buying it is liked, quoted through the Saudi bachelor party and cancer lines.
- Her thief audition on Bourbon Street is short but good; she carries it, and the sequence won one participant over on her, with a Pretty Woman-like sense of an actress blossoming in the part.
- The pre-Super Bowl bedroom scene, where he explains the Mello nickname and his dad's hammers-and-nails advice, is the needed quiet scene showing why to care about the couple.
- The Super Bowl scene is called one of the most rewatchable scenes of the last 10 years.
- The fake teams and uniforms, resembling Seahawks or XFL gear, are indefensible because the Super Bowl rights were not obtained; the sequence runs over 10 minutes.
- On rewatch you see Smith setting up B.D. Wong's gambler Lee Wan, and Sympathy for the Devil, often misused, works well.
- First time through it looks like he will blow the money; Jess spots Farhad through binoculars and gets it; B.D. Wong is great and it is a good 10-minute scene despite fake teams.
- B.D. Wong is having the time of his life off a Law & Order set and is probably overdoing it, flagged for the later overacting award.
- For a non-gambler the scene seems to head into a dark Leaving Las Vegas turn and reveals you can bet on anything.
- As a gambling scene it works, like a home-run hat pool at a ballgame; the one flaw, saved for nitpicks, is the terrible odds of the final double-or-nothing bet.
- Bored rich men betting in a suite is realistic, the reveal of the planted fives is cool, and the clever switch is worrying about Smith instead of the actual gambling addict.
- Liyuan just loves the action and the story, so losing does not bother him; the high matters more than the stakes.
- The limo dump with the $80K payoff, held as one shot while she breaks down, is very Soderbergh; why he does it is deferred.
- In Buenos Aires three years later she flips the con on him over drinks; the music is unnecessary goosing.
- On rewatch Smith visibly seems turned on in the drinks scene, rated a seven on a scale topped by William Hurt in Body Heat, with The Big Easy also cited.
- Owens (Gerald McRaney) sniffs around the hotel room while Robbie escapes by the balcony; balcony escapes are always welcome.
- The Owens rant is called overwritten screenwriting leaning on McRaney's southern military masculinity.
- The final candidate is Nikki explaining the con to the bad guys, the shooting and the whole ending.
- The Super Bowl scene is named most rewatchable 'for me'.
- Asked 'What do you have?', the reply picks the explanation of the con: the keylogger necklace and two montages letting Robbie then Smith tell their sides.
- The ending also features Rodrigo Santoro and the beefy security guy; the guy's roughly 90-second pharmacy sequence is praised as a Soderbergh- or Michael Mann-style bit and deferred to aged-best.
