As a viable movie franchise, the Ocean’s series is evidently wearing down. Ocean’s Thirteen confirms that. This is a worn down heist pic that adds nothing new, despite the classy setting in Las Vegas.
The movie starts when one member of the team, Reuben, mentor to Danny Ocean (George Clooney), is betrayed by his friend, Willy Bank (Al Pacino), when the two planned to start a new Las Vegas casino together, but Bank steals everything and leaves Reuben with a heart attack and struck down in bed. The team reassembles for their last adventure. Ocean, Rusty Ryan (Brad Pitt) and Linus Caldwell (Matt Damon) lead the team when they decide to hit Bank hard on the opening night of his casino, the Bank. What follows is pretty much a repeat of before—the same wit and style is here, but with that comes high predictability.
Soderdough also returns with his cast for this last venture. When the reception to the setting in Europe for Ocean’s Twelve was mixed, the filmmakers wisely for the audience changed the scenery to classical Vegas. Ocean’s Thirteen garnered generally positive reviews and was a success at the box-office though not on the scale as Ocean’s Eleven.
I will state again, as I have with my reviews on the two previous movies, that the Ocean’s movies are all simple popcorn flicks and there is no depth adding beyond that. What we get is straightforward fun. But the problem is that we've seen it all before, namely in Eleven and Twelve. Thirteen is almost enough.
Ocean’s Thirteen is an unnecessary picture. This is something that almost anybody could throw a few dollars into the theater hoping for a fun pic. What we see is the ensemble cast scrambling around to pull off another exciting heist movie, but I will state again that we never get to care for them, so that the characters don’t matter to us, and so all we want is some serious cinema entertainment. I might as well include that I complained a little about this with both the predeccessors.
Ocean’s Thirteen is not without some fun moments. I did indeed chuckle once in a while at a few of the gags it managed to pull off.
The last act of the movie came in the same fashion I expected it to come in. The good guys win and separate again, implying that they will be back for another exploit at robbing a casino or two, but not on film. Clooney has publicly stated that there will not be any additional sequels.
So this is the end of the road for the Ocean’s movies. I’m not a big fan of any of them, and they're flicks that come and go like that.
**/5
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