Ocean's Thirteen Release Date: June 8, 2007 Starring: Bernie Mac, Ellen Barkin, Eddie Izzard, Matt Damon, Scott Caan, Vincent Cassel, Andy Garcia, Brad Pitt, Elliott Gould, Don Cheadle, Al Pacino, Casey Affleck, George Clooney, Carl Reiner, Eddie Jemison, Shaobo Qin Directed by: Stephen Soderbergh
GLENN KENNY'S REVIEW (posted 6/7/07)
What sets Ocean's Thirteen apart from every other summer blockbuster currently unspooling is that this movie's actually more fun if you bring an attention span to the theater with you. Not that it's a particularly deep piece of work, but it is a pretty damn intricate one — something that's best enjoyed by a viewer who's actively keeping up with it.
This is the third time lovable rogue Danny Ocean and his charming and largely good-looking team of swindlers are on the job for director Steven Soderbergh, and Soderbergh, with screenwriters Brian Koppelman and David Levien (who, as I have been obliged to point out elsewhere, are friends of this reviewer) have cooked up quite a job for them. After the gang's pal and mentor Reuben (Gould) gets business-deal-backstabbed so hard he almost dies, Danny and company need to return to Vegas and get back hard at Willie Bank (Pacino), the egocentric, bad-news Vegas mogul who wielded the veritable knife. Their revenge involves re-gaming, as it were, Bank's newest venture, a spectacularly vulgar (even by Vegas standards) casino called, of course, The Bank. Instead of the house winning, as Vegas rules require, the players win, all of them, with Danny and pals hauling the biggest take. Even if you were only talking standard issue casino security, this seems an impossible dream. But as it happens, Willie's Bank has a new ultra-high-tech system in place that makes the dream even impossible-er.
What this means, among other things, is a movie that has a lot of exposition front-loaded into it. But exposition delivered by smoothies like Clooney and Pitt and sharpies like Mack and Izzard plays better than exposition delivered by more run-of-the-mill performers. Although Soderbergh keeps the surfaces so lively, bathing them in otherworldly color and cutting with such jazzy rhythm that certain details become a pleasure to miss.
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