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.
