Ocean's Thirteen: Less than eleven but more than twelve.

There is a scene mid-way through the last installment of the Oceans Eleven franchise where our two main characters Danny Ocean and Rusty Ryan lament over the vegas that used to be and how it has changed for the worse. The same could be said for the heist movie which has now become just another mundane genre full of cliche'd robbery methods and meaningless payoffs. Thankfully Ocean's Thirteen has enough charm and humor to make us forget or at least ignore the fact that as a heist movie it doesn't quite work on more than one level.

The story opens with the rest of our beloved gang discovering that their mentor and financier Reuben Tishkoff (Elliott Gould) has landed in the hospital as a result of a business deal gone awry with sleazy casino developer Willy Bank (Al Pacino, terrific). After going through a somewhat humorous list of what they could all do to Bank to enact revenge they decide not to use violence and hit him where it really hurts: by sabotaging his new casino 'The Bank' on it's opening night. These men, of course, would never resort to violence. Sure they have no problem stealing loads of money but hurting another huma being is absolutely out of the question, how then would be able to root for them?

The plot to bring down Bank's casino is an elaborate one. It involves a number of operations that seem ten times as impossible as anything in the first film. They include infiltrating numerous associated industries of the casino industry such as a dice factory in Mexico where the always funny Casey Affleck and Scott Caan do as much to help the Ocean's gang cause as they do to start a workers revolution. The gang also needs to infiltrate the gaming board so that they can manipulate the card machines in order to rig black jack and watch Bernie Mac's Frank Catton show up as a domino dealer keen on selling his special gaming tables. While these scams and cons might seem difficult enough on their own none of it can be done while the casino's special security system is functioning. In order to get it to go offline they need to create a miniature earthquake by doing no less then drilling underneath the casino with a large man driven drill, one that was specifically used to 'dig the chunnel from the French side'.

There is also a smaller sub-plot that entails Saul (Carl Reiner) impersonating a notorious reviewer of casinos. He is given the royal treatment while the real casino reviewer (David Paymer) is subjected to the worst hotel service (including a nasty skin infection) known to man. This ties in to what really matters to Willy Bank: the coveted 'five diamond' rating for a new casino. Bank has one five already that he keeps stored away on the top floor of his monstrosity of a new building and is hell bent on getting a sixth. This creates significant problems for the Ocean's gang when they run out of money and ar forced to go to their former nemesis Terry Benedict for financing. He demands that they also steal Bank's 'five diamond' awards and will not finance the other part of their plan unless they capitulate.

There are numerous other developments in the film in which I could divulge but I don't feel the need to because nothing in this film goes deeper than the surface. The first 'Ocean's' film had all of the charm of this one but it also had just a little bit of depth with the added story of Danny Ocean trying to win back his ex-wife Tess from Terry Benedict. In 'Thirteen' Ocean's Tess and Rusty's Isabelle are mentioned only in passing and it is alluded that things are over in both relationships. This is really just a way for their to be an explanation of their absence from the film. The only thing closely resembling a romantic story is Matt Damon's character's seduction of Ms. Sponder (Ellen Barkin) as Pacino's #2. This was a fun sub plot and had it been given more development earlier in the film would have paid off in a more rewarding fashion. Instead it is just another cherry on top of the sundae.

In the end Ocean's Thirteen is no great achievement; it offers very little that is new in the heist genre, there are happenings which are illogical at best and impossible at worst and much of what happens seems to materialize out of thin air. Heist movies of the old days took pleasure in explaining how the crime would be achieved and we eventually grew to believe in the plan along with the criminals. This film simply shows us the results and asks that we take the leap. However, despite all the things this film gets wrong as heist movie it moves along wonderfully as a piece of pop art. Steven Sodebergh is a director who I have long admired but his latest attempts and experiments have mostly failed. Bubble was an interesting film but didn't quite reach the catharsis necessary to make it relevant and last year's the Good German was an earnest experiment that ultimately failed in achieving all that it wanted to be. But with Ocean's Thirteen Sodebergh hits the mark, at least on the surface. We don't need emotional depth or revelatory dialogue or even believable set pieces here, it was made merely to entertain us and it does that. It's style is beautiful, and the characters banter is great to listen to now that it lacks some of the arrogance of the 2nd film. I suppose it is essential to suspend disbelief for a film like this, because once you do it is worth the ride.

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