Movie Review: Ocean's 13

Ocean's Eleven was a fun, slick, stylized star-filled popcorn vegas bank heist flick. Even my father enjoyed the film (although he said he liked the original Sinatra film better). And truth be told, it's hard to put this many charismatic actors on the screen and not incite magic. The sequel failed in almost every way. Sure, the stars were back, but gone was the stylized crazy story that made the first film so much fun. It also suffered from what I like to call the Temple of Doom syndrome, where they uplifted the characters and placed them in a whole new setting. With a sequel, people want to see more of the same thing. And who really wants to see the Ocean crew pull of a set of lame European heists anyway?Ocean's Thirteen returns to the original locale: Vegas Baby, Vegas, where ruthless casino owner Willy Bank (Al Pacino) double crossed Danny Ocean's (George Clooney) friend and mentor Reuben Tishkoff (Elliott Gould), putting him in the hospital. Danny calls the crew back to action to seek revenge against Bank and his new lavish Vegas Casino which is geared towards "whales."  The plan is to cost the casino over $500 million in just under four minutes, effectively ruining Banks life.

The story is convoluted and ridiculous at best, but we don't care. All three Ocean's films have been set in a world of wacky unrealistic elaborate situations, which require the right character to be in the right place if something unplanned happens. But again, we don't really care.

Director Steven Soderbergh returns to the slick seventies style, split screens, fast pans, steadicam, dolly shots and even 70's style zoom-ins. Unfortunately, the fun big actor cameos (playing themselves) have all but been abandoned, with the exception of one big tv star appearing on the television screen.

/Film Rating: 7 out of 10