Scott Caan is at his best with someone to argue with. In Ocean's Eleven the bickering is the whole performance and it is a pleasure; the sequels give him less each time, and television has since kept him in the same fast-talking part.
Fi1m perspective
The Malloy brothers are arguing before we have worked out what about. In Ocean's Eleven (2001) Scott Caan and Casey Affleck play two brothers who cannot agree on anything, and Soderbergh has the sense to let them go. Caan is the louder of the two. He can make a quarrel about nothing sound as if it matters a great deal to him, and he has the timing to stop just before it becomes tiresome. It is the sort of part an actor is given so the leads can look relaxed, and he plays it as if the film were about him.
He came up through independent films in the mid-1990s, after a spell as a rapper and a stint at Playhouse West, and found studio work in Enemy of the State (1998), Varsity Blues (1999) and Boiler Room (2000), where he was already the one talking fastest in a room full of men. Then came Turk Malloy, three times over. Later he joined Entourage for its final seasons as Scott Lavin, and from 2010 to 2020 he was Danny Williams in Hawaii Five-0, ten years opposite Alex O'Loughlin, in a pairing the fans named as if it were a couple. That is a long time to spend being wisecracking and tough, and the parts have rarely asked for anything else.
The trouble is visible inside the one franchise we have followed him through. In Ocean's Eleven the brothers are never not funny. In Ocean's Twelve (2004) they are on the bill and given company rather than parts. By Ocean's Thirteen (2007) Soderbergh sends them off on an errand of their own, and we found that every cut back to it felt like a wrong turn; we had laughed at every exchange in the first film, and now we were waiting for the scene to end. The difference was not the actor. Nobody had written him anything.
He noticed, and did something about it. He has written and directed his own features, Dallas 362 (2003) and The Dog Problem (2006), and his explanation is disarming: he says he started writing because he kept getting parts he could step into without much work, and he got bored. We have not reviewed those films. The reviews of a later one, Mercy (2009), called it a vanity project, which is the word that follows actors who direct themselves whether they deserve it or not.
So he remains a supporting actor who was very good once and has been kept busy since. Put on Ocean's Eleven, wait for the brothers, and enjoy a film that knew exactly how much of him to use. Then, if you want to see what a decade of the same part looks like, there are ten seasons of it.
Biography
Scott Caan is an American actor. Born in Los Angeles on 23 August 1976, he is the son of actor James Caan and trained at Playhouse West in Los Angeles.
He received his breakthrough role as Turk Malloy in Ocean's Eleven (2001), reprising the part in Ocean's Twelve (2004) and Ocean's Thirteen (2007). He starred as Detective Danny 'Danno' Williams in the CBS series Hawaii Five-0 (2010–2020), for which he received a Golden Globe nomination. Caan had a recurring role as Scott Lavin in the HBO series Entourage (2009–2011).
In the 1990s he performed as a rapper in the hip-hop group The Whooliganz under the name Mad Skillz. He made his directorial debut with Dallas 362 (2003), which he also wrote.
