Thirteen is Ocean’s Lucky Number
By David Wildman

Back when Ocean’s Twelve was about to be released, I was kidnapped and taken to a strange and faraway place known as Palm Springs. There, flocks of PR agents showed me the film, ushered me into a press conference, and plied me with drinks, room service and golf carts in an attempt to get me to like the thing. Unfortunately for the powers that be, it didn’t work—golf carts or no, the movie was still an unwieldy, hopeless mess.

This time, nobody bothered to fly me anywhere, let alone buy me drinks on Bob Hope Drive. And yet, I really liked Ocean’s Thirteen. So much for the power of swag.

The plot is blissfully simple: One of the elder members of Danny Ocean’s crew, Reuben (Elliott Gould), tries to quit the conman game and go straight, pouring all his money and energy into a partnership with corrupt casino owner Willie Bank (Al Pacino). Bank promptly screws him over, leaving the poor man penniless on his deathbed. The team converges to avenge Reuben by breaking into Bank’s brand new casino. There’s some diamonds to steal, and—just to keep them on their toes—there’s a supercomputer that monitors everything.

You would think that after remaking the same remake of a film twice, with an identical cast of characters, it would be stale by now. But director/executive producer Steven Soderbergh has clearly learned from the first two efforts. In Ocean’s Thirteen, he’s kept all the good parts, while exorcising the crap that didn’t work.

The main thing that glopped up the first sequel was a script that tried to give the Ocean bandits actual lives outside of being high-rolling criminals. It just didn’t work. These characters are too thinly drawn to stand up to any kind of realistic scrutiny, and the attempts to humanize them or focus on any individual character just slowed down the action. Ocean’s Twelve took this to ludicrous extremes, going completely meta on our asses with the most ill-advised attempts at a plot twist I’ve ever seen: Julia Roberts playing a character who’s trying to play, er, Julia Roberts.

By focusing on the lives and loves of Rusty (Brad Pitt) and Danny Ocean (George Clooney) in the second film, Soderbergh threw off the balance and turned the rest of the crew into even worse caricatures. Ocean’s motley crew of thieves are all equally contrived, existing for no reason other than to facilitate the almighty breakneck flow of events—something Ocean’s Thirteen openly acknowledges, even celebrates.

For this go-round, new writers Brian Koppelman and David Levien (known for Runaway Jury—go figure) get smart and rein in the subplots. There are only small hints about Rusty’s rocky love life, manifested in snippets of conversations we hear between him and Danny before they get right down to business. And there’s only one major scene between the two that doesn’t directly tie in with the heist. It’s a tongue-in-cheek bonding episode where they both become distracted by an episode of Oprah, which is as righteously silly as it sounds, but also genuinely funny.

Ocean’s Thirteen also spends some time acknowledging some of the regulars in the ensemble. Matt Damon as Linus, sporting a bulbous fake nose, plays a key role as the seducer of Abigail Sponder (Ellen Barkin), Bank’s cougar-ish henchwoman. Casey Affleck (whose character, Virgil Malloy, remained somewhat anonymous in previous films) is also given a decent slice of screen time. He sports a hilarious fake mustache and becomes a born-again Che Guevara type, fomenting a strike at the Mexican factory where he’s been sent to ensure that the dice for the casino get doctored. And Gould receives props from the entire cast as the bedridden friend the entire team mobilizes to avenge.

The rest of the film is wall-to-wall Vegas opulence, quick camerawork, even quicker blasts of situational humor, snappy one-liners and loads of Mission: Impossible-style con-man derring-do, without the slightest attempt to make any of it believable. It’s never in doubt that our heroes are decent people who will do anything to right the wrongs against Reuben, and that they’ll ultimately be able to pull off their tricky heist.

The story amps up the fun even more by pulling in some familiar old enemies, now willing to put aside past differences in order to help stick it to the loud and arrogant casino man Bank (a role Pacino nails). Everybody has a good time, nobody gets hurt, and the audience goes home happy.

Oh—and there’s one last important detail that really gives Ocean’s Thirteen my highest stamp of approval: This film is certified 100 percent Julia Roberts-free.

OCEAN’S THIRTEEN RATED PG-13 | AT THEATERS EVERYWHERE