June 10, 2007 -- “Ocean's 13” is an enjoyable bit of fluff which has no real substance and no reason to exist, except to make money, of course. The plot makes no sense. There is no suspense, or jeopardy because everyone in the movie is in on the joke, including the audience. This movie is the modern equivalent of those old road movies starring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour. Nothing is serious and everything is played for laughs. Watching this movie is like eating cotton candy: It may not have any substance, but it sure tastes good.

The movie starts out with a scene between Reuben Tishkoff (played by Elliott Gould) and Willie Bank (Al Pacino), where Reuben signs over some valuable Las Vegas real estate to Bank after some weak strong arm tactics that wouldn't have scared Pee Wee Herman. Reuben then suffers a serious heart attack. His old buddies hear about it and decide to get even with Willie Bank, and in the process restore Reuben's wealth. The plan is very elaborate, involving rigging all the games in Bank's new casino, some huge Chunnel digging devices, bribery, fixing loaded dice, computer hacking, substituting fake diamonds for real ones, planting operatives on the inside of the casino and various other schemes. It is way more complicated than that, since it also involves enlisting the aid of an old enemy, Terry Benedict (played by Andy Garcia), who is not to be trusted. The scheme is very expensive, and ends up costing the Ocean's 13 crew everything they've got, which begs the question: Why didn't they just give some money to Reuben and avoid all this expense and risk? The idea of a revenge heist isn't a new one. This is the same basic kind of plot as seen before in such films as “The Italian Job” and “The Sting.”

As with most heist movies, the entertainment is in the details. This film shows so many details that you tend to get lost in them. One of the funnier segments has to do with a weekend from hell engineered for a hotel critic (David Paymer) in order to lower the hotel's rating and make Willie Bank's property less valuable. Another funny segment has Linus Caldwell (Matt Damon disguised with a large nose) seducing casino executive Abigail Sponder (Ellen Barkin) using sexual pheromones. Another one has a couple of operatives in Mexico getting caught up in a worker strike at a dice factory. The cast of characters is mostly the same as in the previous two movies, including George Clooney as Danny Ocean along with Brad Pitt, Don Cheadle, Bernie Mac, Carl Reiner, Shaobo Qin, Casey Affleck, Scott Caan and others. The talent in front of and behind the camera (it is directed by Steven Soderbergh) shows, with a breezy pace, lush production values, snappy editing, a nice musical score and competent acting. This film rates a B.

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Copyright © 2007 Robert Roten. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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