Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven Has A Big Plot Hole You Can't Unsee

Few films embody the term "lightning in a bottle" quite like Steven Soderbergh's "Ocean's Eleven." This remake of the famous Rat Pack flick of the same name was a surprising pick for Soderbergh's follow up to his blockbuster 2000. Having broken onto the scene with the Palme d'Or winning "Sex, Lies, and Videotape" in 1989, Soderbergh worked his way through the studio system making a series of film's that struggled to recapture the heat of his debut picture.

That all changed in 2000, when Soderbergh didn't just blow up the box office not just once, but twice. First, with the Julia Roberts vehicle "Erin Brockovich," telling the true underdog story of a paralegal with a push up bra taking on the powerful California gas company PG&E, followed shortly thereafter with "Traffic," a three-pronged story about the illegal drug trade in the United States.

Both films grossed over $250 million worldwide. "Erin Brockovich" earned him a nomination for Best Director at the 73rd Academy Awards, losing to... Steven Soderbergh for "Traffic." The rare dual Oscar nomination capped off his blockbuster year, and he followed that high with the remake of "Ocean's Eleven" as his next project, reuniting with "Out of Sight" star George Clooney to bring the Rat Pack to the 21th century.

"Ocean's Eleven" turned into a bonafide masterpiece renowned for its pitch perfect plotting, but there is a major plot hole hiding right under our noses that even the film's writer Ted Griffin was surprised to discover.

Throughout "Ocean's Eleven," we watch step-by-step how Danny Ocean and his crew plan to take down casino boss Terry Benedict's Bellagio hotel vault. They create an exact replica of the vault in a warehouse to plan out their heist, orchestrate a power outage during a boxing match as a distraction, and send the authorities on a wild goose chase following what they believe to be several duffel bags worth $150 million to the Las Vegas airport. When the van explodes, the SWAT team assembled outside discovers they've been duped: the bags weren't filled with cash, but flyers for Vegas call girls.

We've seen every element of how this plan has come together, from Bernie Mac glad-handing his way into a discount van, to Eddie Jemison's sleuthing into the casino's security system, but we never actually see how those stacks of flyers make their way down into the vault and back out again in the extra duffel bags.

In the film's commentary with Soderbergh and writer Ted Griffin, Griffin explains exactly how impossible this is:

"... [The] hole is how did they get six bags worth of flyers into the vault, to them have them carry them out. Everything else I can rationalize or explain away in movie logic. In movie logic, there's no way the flyers got down there."

Soderbergh reminds Griffin that they had actually discussed this plot hole while making the movie, and that they decided to "blow it off" because it's not an essential part of the heist. Considering just how hard Soderbergh pushed himself to make the film, describing the exhausting lengths he went to ensure the film had the appearance of being effortlessly breezy, it's not surprising then that this was the one corner they decided to cut.

For any plot hole police out there, let this be a lesson that a plot hole doesn't matter if the movie is strong enough to get by without you ever noticing it. No little plot hole can take away the pure joy that it is to watch "Ocean's Eleven," and the fact that it's there only makes the case stronger that "Ocean's Eleven" is one of the best films in Soderbergh's long and varied filmography.