Ocean's Eleven Heist: Every Ocean's Heist, Step by Step

Yes, Ocean's Eleven is a heist movie, and all five Ocean's films are built around a planned theft. The Ocean's Eleven movies cover five distinct jobs: the 1960 original robs five casinos at once, the 2001 remake goes after a single shared vault, Ocean's Twelve chases a Fabergé egg, Ocean's Thirteen rigs a whole casino, and Ocean's Eight steals a necklace at the Met Gala.

Why is it called Ocean's Eleven? The title counts the crew. In 1960, Danny Ocean and Jimmy Foster bring nine former comrades from their Second World War airborne unit together, which makes eleven men. In 2001, Danny Ocean and Rusty Ryan gather a crew of eleven, backed by the retired casino owner Reuben Tishkoff.

How much money did they steal? The 1960 crew ends with no money, the 2001 crew keeps the vault's cash with no total stated, and the only stated figure in the series is the $150 million Toussaint necklace in Ocean's Eight.

Each heist section covers the target, crew, method and outcome of one job. The untitled prequel, dated by Warner Bros. for June 25, 2027, is covered on the oceans eleven prequel page.

The original Ocean's Eleven heist is a simultaneous robbery of five Las Vegas Strip casinos (the Sahara, Riviera, Desert Inn, Sands and Flamingo) at midnight on New Year's Eve. Ocean's Eleven (1960), directed by Lewis Milestone, stars Frank Sinatra as Danny Ocean, and the crew runs the job like a military operation.

The structure is what later films borrowed, so the steps are worth laying out:

1. Danny Ocean and Jimmy Foster recruit nine old army buddies.
2. Several of them take jobs inside the casinos, one drives a garbage truck, and another performs in a hotel lounge.
3. The crew sets explosives at a power transmission tower and secretly rewires each casino's backup electrical system, so the cashier cages open when the emergency generator starts.
4. At midnight the tower goes up and the Strip goes dark.
5. The men enter the cages, hold up the cashiers and dump the money into the hotels' garbage bins.
6. The garbage truck collects the bags and rolls through the police blockade.

The weak point is human, not mechanical. Their electrician, Tony Bergdorf, dies of a heart attack on the Strip, and the police begin to ask questions. Duke Santos, a retired gangster, reads the crew's army records and demands half the take. The crew hides the cash in Tony Bergdorf's coffin, which is cremated, so the money is destroyed.

The Ocean's Eleven (2001) heist robs a vault shared by three Las Vegas casinos owned by Terry Benedict on the night of a major boxing match, when the vault holds the most cash. Ocean's Eleven (2001), directed by Steven Soderbergh, stars George Clooney as Danny Ocean, Brad Pitt as Rusty Ryan and Andy Garcia as Terry Benedict.

Why this target? Danny walks out of a New Jersey prison and goes straight to planning, and Benedict is now dating Danny's ex-wife Tess, so the job is part theft and part grudge. Here is how the crew handles it:

1. Danny recruits his old partner Rusty, and the two assemble specialists, including a pickpocket, a demolitions expert, a card dealer and an acrobat. Reuben Tishkoff, a retired casino owner, backs the operation.
2. The team builds a replica of the vault to rehearse.
3. Linus Caldwell, the pickpocket, gets close to Benedict while the others prepare the equipment and disguises.
4. On fight night, a device creates an electromagnetic pulse that knocks out power across the city.
5. During the blackout, crew members disguised as a SWAT team enter the vault and bag the cash.
6. Benedict's security staff are fed a looped recording of the vault, so he believes it is still guarded.

Benedict works out that Danny is behind it and has him jailed for violating parole. Searching the crew turns up nothing, because the cash had already been swapped out. The closing shot has the gang at the Bellagio fountain.

Ocean's Eleven (2001) grossed $451 million worldwide on an $85 million budget, according to Box Office Mojo.

The Ocean's Twelve heist is a wager over who can get to a Fabergé egg first, pitting Danny Ocean against a showy rival known as the Night Fox. Ocean's Twelve, directed by Steven Soderbergh, opens with Terry Benedict tracking down all eleven of Danny's former crew and ordering them to repay what they took, with interest, inside two weeks.

Scattered around the world and short of cash, the crew relocates to Europe. Their first schemes collapse, and the Amsterdam job fails because someone alerted Benedict. The informant is François Toulour, the Night Fox, a baron who wants to be recognized as the finer thief. He offers Danny a contest: if Danny reaches the egg before him, Toulour will cover the crew's debt.

The pieces of the final play:

1. Isabel Lahiri (Catherine Zeta-Jones), a Europol detective with a history with Rusty, pursues the crew and the Night Fox alike.
2. Tess Ocean joins the scheme and poses as the actress Julia Roberts.
3. The plan seems to fall apart, and most of the crew is taken into custody.
4. Linus's mother, an FBI agent, helps secure their release.
5. Danny then shows that the real egg was exchanged long before, thanks to Toulour's own mentor, Gaspar LeMarc.

Toulour must concede and pays Benedict. Reuben hands over the money and pledges that the crew will leave Benedict's casinos alone. Isabel, meanwhile, finds out that LeMarc is her father.

The Ocean's Thirteen heist is an act of revenge: Danny Ocean's crew sabotages the opening night of Willy Bank's new Las Vegas casino so that the house loses. Ocean's Thirteen, directed by Steven Soderbergh, starts when Bank (Al Pacino), a hotel developer, pushes Reuben Tishkoff out of the project they share and leaves him with a token chip. Reuben collapses with a heart attack, and Danny rallies the old crew.

The crew sets three aims:

1. Spoil the hotel's bid for a top industry rating.
2. Fix the tables and slot machines so that gamblers collect big and the casino misses its expected profit.
3. Beat the advanced system that detects cheating.

A setback arrives when the drilling equipment fails. Needing funds, the crew approaches its former enemy Terry Benedict, who agrees on one condition: Bank's valuable diamonds must be stolen. Linus cozies up to Bank's assistant Abigail to get near the stones, and Benedict quietly sends his own thief after them.

On opening night the rigged games run and a staged disaster clears the building. Benedict's thief grabs the diamonds, but they are a decoy, since Danny anticipated the betrayal. Patrons leave with huge winnings and Bank has no way to strike back. Part of the take buys Reuben a casino of his own, and Danny donates Benedict's share to charity under Benedict's name.

The Ocean's Eight heist takes the Toussaint, a Cartier diamond necklace valued at about $150 million, off the neck of the actress Daphne Kluger during the Met Gala. Ocean's Eight, directed by Gary Ross, centers on Debbie Ocean (Sandra Bullock), the sister of the late Danny Ocean, who spent a long prison sentence designing the job.

How it unfolds:

1. Once free, Debbie teams up again with Lou (Cate Blanchett) and adds the designer Rose Weil (Helena Bonham Carter), the jeweler Amita (Mindy Kaling), the hacker Nine Ball (Rihanna), the pickpocket Constance (Awkwafina) and the fence Tammy (Sarah Paulson).
2. Rose takes the job of styling the gala's host, Daphne Kluger (Anne Hathaway), which puts the necklace around Daphne's neck.
3. Amita and Rose craft a convincing copy, Tammy lands a job at Vogue, and Lou slips into the gala in disguise.
4. During the event Daphne is dosed through her soup and steps away, giving Constance the opening to lift the necklace.
5. Amita cuts the piece apart, the crew carries the fragments out of the museum, and the copy stays behind.

Debbie frames Claude Becker, her former partner and ex-lover, for the theft. Daphne figures out the scheme and takes the eighth spot on the crew for a share. The insurance investigator John Frazier suspects Debbie, but her alibi stands. A final twist follows: Lou also traded royal jewels lent to the museum for fakes, a haul worth more than the necklace.

The sound of the Ocean's heists changes with each job: Nelson Riddle scored the 1960 original, David Holmes composed the 2001 film, Ocean's Twelve and Ocean's Thirteen, and Daniel Pemberton wrote the music for Ocean's Eight.

The Rat Pack era shows in the 1960 film's songs, which include Dean Martin singing his number about a kick in the head and Sammy Davis Jr. performing "EEE-O-11".

The 2001 vault job pulls from pop and soul instead of a single sound: Berlin's "Take My Breath Away", Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit in the Sky", Liberace's "Moon River" and Elvis Presley's "A Little Less Conversation" sit beside Holmes's own "Gritty Shaker".

Ocean's Twelve moves the crew to Europe and the songs follow, with Ornella Vanoni's "L'appuntamento", Piero Umiliani's "Crepuscolo sul mare", "Faust 72" by Dynastie Crisis and "Lazy" by Yellow Hammer.

Pemberton's Ocean's Eight score names cues after the plan itself, including "Hacking the Met", "The Actual Heist" and "Sloppy Soup Samba". Track lists for the series are collected on the ocean's eleven soundtrack page.

In my opinion, the 2001 vault job is the best heist in the series, and the order here is mine, based on how clean the plan is and how well the film lets you follow each step. For the full film order, see ocean's eleven movies ranked.

1. Ocean's Eleven (2001). The vault job is the template for the genre. The replica vault, the electromagnetic pulse and the looped security footage are three separate tricks that each have a visible purpose, and the cash swap that defeats Benedict's search is the best payoff in the franchise.

2. Ocean's Thirteen. Rigging a casino to lose is a fresh idea, and the decoy diamonds show Danny planning for a double cross before it happens. It loses a place only because the drill failure forces a detour.

3. Ocean's Eight. The Toussaint plan is built around a person, Daphne Kluger, and the second theft of the royal jewels is a smart reveal. The steps are clear, if less technical.

4. Ocean's Twelve. The egg bet is clever, but the film spends most of its runtime showing the wrong plan, and the real one is explained after the fact.

5. Ocean's Eleven (1960). The five casino blackout is the most ambitious target list in the series, and the Bergdorf coffin is a grim twist. As a plan, though, it depends on luck with one electrician's heart.

If you are new to the series, start with the 2001 film.