Ocean's Thirteen
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Written by Brian Koppelman and David Levien
Starring George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon
Classification: PG
Rating: **½
"You don't run the same gag twice - you run the next gag," explains Don Cheadle as Basher, the Cockney explosives expert in Ocean's Thirteen.
Cue explosive laughter, for who doesn't get the joke that Ocean's Thirteen is Ocean's Eleven: Part 2? (The Europe-based of Ocean's Twelve seems to be best forgotten.)
Still as insubstantial as a showgirl's pasties and as sparkly as a zirconium pinky ring, Steven Soderbergh's movie recapitulates the plot of that 2001 remake with a few variations. Both Eleven and Thirteen are set in Las Vegas, involve casino infiltrations and robbery, electro-magnetic pulses, a climb down an elevator shaft, an inside "plant' on the gaming floor and fake law-enforcement officers.
As before, George Clooney plays the dapper Danny Ocean, the gentleman robber, and the supporting cast is again starred with studs. There's Brad Pitt as Rusty Ryan, rarely seen in this film without a beverage in hand, and occasionally waving an amiable eyebrow by way of a performance.
Matt Damon, the former rookie, is now developing an independent streak, which means he gets to emulate Jerry Lewis (who wasn't in the original 1960 version of Ocean's 11.) The rest of the cast amounts to an assemblage of winking cameos by Bernie Mac, Andy Garcia, Shaobo Qin, Scott Caan, Carl Reiner, Cheadle, Elliott Gould and Casey Affleck. Al Pacino and Ellen Barkin are added to the mix as the villainous casino owner and his right-hand woman.
If Ocean's Thirteen were compared to a gem, it would have to be considered something of a flashy fraud: Initially impressive for cut and colour, it lacks either clarity or weight.
At intervals, Soderbergh fills the screen with swooping camera pans, colour-saturated frames, fireworks and fountains. The complex where the action takes place is a monumental double-helix tower that has been computer-generated onto the Vegas skyline, like an improbable Genetic Code Casino.
But these eccentric flourishes seem to be just Soderbergh's way of offering his visual signature to a smug, money-grabbing movie about smug, money-grabbing con men. (Sorry, I mean artists like Soderbergh, Clooney, Pitt and Damon, who are using this movie to pay for their more serious and personal works.) Shortly after the movie opens we learn that Rufus (Gould), the aged moneyman of the group, has had a heart attack after being cruelly swindled out of his new dream casino by partner Willie Banks, played by Pacino, overacting as he does these days, while in alarming hennaed hair and delivering lines in his usual gravel-gargling staccato bark.
Danny and his crew forgo doing something simple - like dropping a nuclear warhead on the casino - in favour of teaching Banks a flashy lesson by giving the casino a really embarrassing opening night.
First, they plan to defeat a state-of-the-art artificial-intelligence system and rig his games so he loses a fortune, then they'll fake an earthquake, steal a cache of diamonds from an impregnable safe and, best of all, ruin Banks's chance of winning a coveted five-diamond rating in the casino guide.
This isn't spoiling the plot. For a good 10 minutes, Danny and Rusty outline their big plan to another heist-man, Roman (Eddie Izzard), whose job is to tell them how their plan will never work. The script, by Brian Koppelman and David Levien (of the gambling movie Rounders fame), initially seems clever as it packs con slang and technical jargon and pure nonsense in a blizzard of blather. Then the denouement throws almost all of the plan away, and the ensuing action depends on coincidence and improbable luck.
Even treated just as toss-off entertainment, Ocean's Thirteen doesn't cut it. The humour, which ought to be as sophisticated as the visual style, is cartoonish, relying on mugging performances and joke-shop props (wigs, false noses and mustaches), eye-rolling reaction takes and badly faked English accents.
There's are a trio of tacky subplots - one including sweatshop Mexican factory workers, another involving David Paymer as a much-abused casino rater, and the third being a seedy seduction. When Linus (Damon) hears that Banks's assistant (Barkin) has a thing for younger men, he dons a long fake nose called a "Brody" (apparently in honour of actor Adrien Brody) to seduce her. He wears dark makeup and dresses like a Latino bellhop; she sighs and heaves and curls her lip, and between the two of them there's enough ham onscreen to have the movie banned in some religious countries.
Director Soderbergh, who can create charming light entertainment (his 1998 Elmore Leonard adaptation, Out of Sight, is a model of it), has thrown in his lot with the summer's other low-ambition three-quels, Spider-Man 3 and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. For all its forced twinkle, Ocean's Thirteen leaves you with no real warmth, like a croupier who's just cleaned you out before he wishes you a nice day.