Thieving Las Vegas (Review: Ocean's Thirteen)

They do the heist, we’re told, for completely altruistic reasons.

You see, Reuben Tishkoff (Elliot Gould), the Ocean gang’s old-school-Vegas, cigar-smoking, ruffled-tuxedo-shirt-wearing, outrageously-broad-Jewish-accent-having patriarch, has partnered up with casino tycoon Willie Bank (Al Pacino), who has screwed him over so thoroughly and ruthlessly that Reuben winds up in the hospital with a myocardial infarction, so demoralized and ashamed that he refuses even to talk to his friends.

Ocean and his friends are outraged, not only by the mistreatment of one of their own, but by Bank’s casual violation of the Vegas code (guys who once shook Sinatra’s hand are not supposed to con each other), and so they pool their resources to sabotage the opening night of Bank’s newest and gaudiest Vegas casino. And this is no mere thumbtack-on-the-chair practical joke: the underground drill they plan on using to simulate an earthquake (don’t ask) costs $36 million alone.

However, we in the audience know that, of the many motives that led to the creation of Ocean’s Thirteen, altruism was not among them. I don’t know if this is a particularly beloved franchise among moviegoers, but it’s definitely a lucrative one: the first Ocean’s caper made nearly half a billion dollars worldwide; the second cleared more than $350 million. The hero of the films is George Clooney’s Danny Ocean, who may be a thief and a con man but who only steals from people who deserve it. In Ocean’s Thirteen, it’s unclear whether Ocean will even make a profile on the caper.

In real life, of course, Clooney will make a ton of money on Ocean’s Thirteen and he’s going to keep it. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, of course—I’m just saying that it’s interesting to think that the character Clooney and director Steven Soderbergh identify with the most in this film isn’t Ocean but the venal, villainous Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia), who—SPOILER ALERT!—shows up at the end of the film on The Oprah Winfrey Show to be congratulated for giving a small fortune to a camp for underprivileged kids, a donation that he only made because Ocean blackmailed him into it. Celebrities, Clooney and Soderbergh seem to be saying, are never as selfless as they appear to be.

But who cares as long as they entertain us? And Ocean’s Thirteen, while it’s by far the least sneakily plotted entry in the series, is still pretty decent entertainment. Of course, I’m a sucker for heist movies, and in fact, I could probably watch a two-hour loop of George Clooney walking around a casino in one of his crisp grey suits while David Holmes music plays on the soundtrack and leave the theatre feeling satisfied. At this point in his career, Clooney has practically become a Zen master of effortless cool—the only thing keeping his Danny Ocean character from becoming insufferably smug is Clooney’s bone-dry underplaying, the handsomeness that’s just casual enough not to spill over into narcissism, the glint in his eye that always seems amused by his co-stars and not just pleased with himself, the smile just a safe fraction away from turning into a smirk.

Sadly, Clooney doesn’t have a female lead to play off this time around. The only woman in the film is Ellen Barkin, one of the great ferocious female movie stars of the ’80s; now 53, she still looks great, but she doesn’t get to do much except play a few truly dopey seduction scenes with Matt Damon... who, for some reason, plays them while wearing a huge fake nose.
That’s a distraction—but on the other hand, Don Cheadle has pretty much given up even attempting to do his terrible Cockney accent. So I guess the distractions all even out. And if you can break even on a trip to Vegas, that still counts as a win.