Better than "12" but not by much

Rating: 5/10 (10 June 2007)

After the disastrous "Ocean's Twelve" was released in 2004, I ended my review by asking, "We've already had this saga sliced 11 and 12 ways with noticeably diminishing results; do they dare go for unlucky 13?" Well, at long last that question has been answered, and it has come in the form of a good news/bad news proposition. The good news is that "Ocean's Thirteen" marks at least a slight improvement over the previous installment (but then again that's not a particularly high bar to jump over). The bad news is that it is ONLY a slight improvement.
For this latest entry in the series (which began, it is easy to forget, with the genuinely entertaining "Ocean's Eleven" in 2001), writers Brian Koppelman and David Levien, and director Steven Soderbergh have at least had the wisdom to return the boys back to Las Vegas, not traipsing all over Europe on what seemed like a high-cost junket for a bunch of already overpaid actors. In "Thirteen," Danny Ocean and his "crew" of con artist buddies rally behind the ailing Reuben Tishkoff (Elliot Gould), who has just been cheated out of his portion of a brand new casino by his unscrupulous partner, the allegorically named Willie Bank (Al Pacino), who wants the business all to himself. The plan is to sabotage Bank's place so it will go belly-up even before it officially opens.
At the beginning, "Ocean's Thirteen" seems like it might turn out to be a fairly decent caper movie, but after about the first half hour or so, a noticeable fatigue and lethargy begin to creep into both the writing and the performances. Very quickly, the plot runs out of steam and we come to sense that the all-star players - George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Don Cheadle, Bernie Mac, Andy Garcia, Carl Reiner et. al.- are merely going through the motions, hanging around just long enough to cash their hefty paychecks before heading off to worthier, more artistically rewarding endeavors. Clooney, Pitt, Damon and Cheadle, in particular, have been striking out on such interesting career paths of late, that, perhaps, their hearts just aren't in this saga much anymore. And without their acting like it matters, it makes it hard for us in the audience to feel that any of it matters either.
"Ocean's Thirteen" may be better than "Ocean's Twelve," but it's still a largely half-hearted effort that does little to burnish the reputation of the original movie. I think it's long past time to float this series out to sea so that its fine actors can continue pursuing more worthwhile projects. We would all benefit from a win-win proposition like that.