Review: Ocean’s 13

The boys are back for one more caper and this time…it’s personal. After Reuben gets screwed out of
a major deal by a royal asshole named Willie Banks, Reuben goes into shock and is bedridden with no hope to move on. Lucky for him, he has the best darn thieves in the business as friends and they are more than willing to get a little revenge on the guy who did this to him. Crazy capers, a very well dressed George Clooney and Brad Pitt (that’s worth the price of admission alone, right ladies?) ensues.

I really enjoyed the first
OCEAN’S flick, the second one not so much, but I definitely like this installment better than the
second one. What can I say, chicks will see this just for the eye-candy and the
guys will want to see this because…well, we want to be them! These guys
are just the smoothest best-dressed criminals around. But maybe that’s the
problem here. They’re just too cool and relaxed, especially if these guys are notorious for pulling off some of the biggest and most impossible capers. No one can be
that calm!

No matter how ridiculous the job they were going to do, you knew they we’re going to pull it off. Plus, a lot
of the details of the caper just magically happened, like an underground rock grinding machine is
magically placed underneath the casino. Or they seem to get access to every hotel/casino in Vegas. One could argue that they just paid people off, but it just seemed a little too
"convenient" all the time. Matt Damon and Ellen Barkin’s scenes were just ridiculous and unbelievable,
although granted there were a couple lines of dialogue that were a little funny, but for the most part, the whole set-up was dumb. And for the record, Ellen Barkin is a smoking hot Cougar.

I know I sound like I’m poo-pooing
all over this film, but I just felt a little gypped. The initial set-up of the caper was interesting and there were some good laughs throughout. All the returning characters were fun to watch and they were able to stretch their characters a little more, mostly with disguises and funny accents…and it worked. In fact, they all looked liked they were having too good of a time and it didn’t seem like
"real" work. I guess it was one of the “lotto” movies? The one thing that always cracked me up in all three films was the fact that everybody understands what Yen is saying, nobody speaks his language, but they understand him. Oh yeah, where was Topher Grace? I always appreciated his little cameos in the last two.

All that
said, this movie just didn’t have the same magic of the first one. In O11, you really didn’t have any idea how they were going to pull it off. Here, you pretty much had a beat on what was going down and how they were going to do it. Soderbergh brought nothing new to the
table and nothing inventive — aside from the cool-ass looking Banks Casino. I think it was CGI. It was pretty seamless, if it was. I think the OCEAN’s franchise has run its
course though. If anything you’re paying to see the star power with a mediocre story line.

— by Tim
Goernert