"Ocean's 13" embraces the "style over substance" ethos like no other film before it - except maybe its two predecessors.
Characters still talk in half sentences, almost as though one already knows just how the other will respond. Plot points continue to fly by at such high velocity that, if any holes were present, the audience wouldn't know any better. And the story, once again, operates on a single motive. Only this time around it's revenge, not greed.
One of Ocean's team members, Reuban Tishkoff (Elliott Gould), has been screwed over big time. When he entered into a partnership with high-class hotel mogul Willie Bank (Al Pacino), he expected egalitarian ownership of the newest and most promising hotel in Vegas. What he got instead was a knife in his back.
Heartache quickly turns into heart attack, and before Bank knows it, Danny Ocean (George Clooney) and the remaining team members are plotting payback. Their plan: hit Bank's hotel on its preliminary opening, ruining both his casino's earnings and his hotel's chances at winning the prestigious Five Diamond Award.
It's certainly easy to criticize "Ocean's 13" for its rather modest ambition - to be the smoothest operating film on the circuit. Just pick several instances where style trumps substance and start punching holes.
What is difficult to do, however, is taking a look at the entire "Ocean's 13" experience and pulling the same punches. This is, without a doubt, an incredibly entertaining film. Director Steven Soderbergh and company have delivered, for a laudatory third time, a smartly filmed, cleverly written caper movie.
The banter between Ocean's members still pops with the same effervescent wit. The direction and editing still mesh together to create that stylish, seat-of-the-pants pacing. And the soundtrack, written once again by David Holmes, sells the whole suave scenario. There are, unfortunately, those critics who decry "Ocean's 13" - and the entire "Ocean's" saga, for that matter - as nothing more than brittle filmmaking that stands up against only the dimmest of audiences. To make such a declaration, however, is to misunderstand just what these films represent: an operatic exercise in slick cinema, a much-beloved male bonding experience, and - perhaps most importantly of all - a reason to have fun at the movies.
But to determine the deeper reason why audiences continue to have fun with the "Ocean's" series, even into its third installment, a bit of film psychology is required. One watches movies for one of two base reasons: either to find pleasure in playing the fly on the wall, in watching what might normally happen behind closed doors (see Alfred Hitchcock's "Rear Window"), or to take pleasure in the vicarious experience, in feeling what it might be like to inhabit a character's world, if only for an hour or two.
"Ocean's 13" provides us the latter experience. Some take a brief look over the film's cast - a veritable stud-fest with George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and Matt Damon - and consider that reason enough to sit in a dark room with unfamiliar people for two hours. Others see that same cast of suave and strapping gents and think to themselves, "If only I were that cool. ."
The point is, no matter your gender or sexual preference, "Ocean's 13" makes everyone want the same thing - to occupy the same time and space that Soderbergh's movie does. Because, chances are, no matter where you are this summer, you probably won't be pulling off the most enormous hotel heist in history.
