This time, revenge is on the table. When Reuben (Elliott Gould) is double-crossed in a deal with Willy Bank (Al Pacino), a cunning, quiet menace of a casino owner, and suffers a heart attack because of it, the boys are called in and they begin yet another convoluted plan to get back at the guy who put their friend in the hospital. The score is five hundred million dollars and they’re throwing out all the stops. You think lifting a building in ‘12’ was surreal? How about faking an earthquake? How about stealing a ton of money in a matter of minutes? It’s just another wonderful journey with these characters.

    If one word can describe this summer’s barrage of threepeats thus far it’s: bloated. There is a lot of shit going on in Spidey, Pirates and Shrek that the characters and interactions get lost in the shuffle. In a lot of ways, ‘Ocean’s 13’ is the biggest offender. Luckily, it is all in some way directly related to the ground caper. There’s a sub-plot involving Casey Affleck about a worker’s strike down in Mexico, the heist story and its many facets plus the relation between Reuben and the boys. There’s a lot going on in and yet, you never feel overwhelmed. You’re not concerned with the characters and their machinations like you would in, say, ‘Pirates 3’, because they aren’t characters in the 3 dimensional model we so look for: they’re attitudes. They’re more about looking cool, tossing out a witty one-liner than being any real person, and god bless them for it. Third time’s the charm and the actors are finally settling in to their on-screen personas and letting loose.

    Julia Roberts and Catherine Zeta Jones’ absences certainly kick the estrogen level down and frankly, the film is better for it. My biggest complaint in ‘Ocean’s 12’ was the shoe-horning in of Roberts character. Replacing them, and usurping the queen bitch throne, is Ellen Barkin, playing Abigail Sponder, the right hand accomplice to Pacino’s Bank. She’s cool, calculating but not afraid to let loose. She aims to please, but deep down, she hates herself. Her character doesn’t have much to do, but she’s a joy to watch. But the real threat comes from Pacino, who is playing a stripped down subdued version of, well, Al Pacino. This is the kind of guy I imagine the Joker being before going batshit crazy: whisper-quiet, but with eyes as deep as the pits of hell. He’s a formidable adversary to Ocean and crew, but like all egomaniacs, his pride will get the better of him. The final conversation between Willy and Danny is seething with angst and bitterness. I loved every second of it, Pacino pissed off and Clooney, as always, playing it cool.

    Of the three films, this was my favorite heist. While I have no idea if it could ever be done, it was a marvel to behold. At times it felt like more of a documentary on how to break a casino than anything, every detail is intricately laid out and explained. Every character has his moment to shine, whether it’s Bernie Mac’s Frank Cotton hustling Willy at a domino’s table to get access into the casino, or it’s Matt Damon’s Linus Caldwell’s gigantic prosthetic nose. There are no love interests, no unnecessary side-plots that bogged down ‘12’, this is a heist movie through and through. Like a slow burn, it takes it’s time, but never lets the audience get bogged down in semantics or dullness. It’s all zip, zip, zip.

    The film is full of a little moments, little vignettes that show what the characters are about that builds to a final conclusion. These are wildly different people thrown together for a common good to doing something bad. While the film has no qualms about giving Willy a sympathetic side, let’s face it, at the end of the day, we’re still rooting for Danny Ocean and crew to knock over the bad guy, take the money and get away. Society loves a smooth-talking criminal and there’s no one cooler, no one smoother than Danny Ocean.

    The screenplay doesn’t play dumb with the audience, but it’s not the smartest of the films either. An acute viewer, especially one who has seen the other two, will be able to figure out parts as they are presented. As a testament to the characters Clooney and Pitt, perhaps the funniest piece of dialogue comes late in the game, as the words spoken sound more like they’re for the actors and not for Danny and Rusty.

    Though the film takes just a little while to get the ball rolling with about twenty minutes of “prologue” and hashing out the details with a certain Eddie Izzard, once it starts, it keeps going until you’re on the edge of your seat cheering, hooting and most certainly, laughing. ‘Ocean’s 13’ is undoubtedly the most successful of the major summer sequels because it remembers what the movies, especially summer movies are all about: having fun.