Ocean In The Desert, Redux-Redux -George Clooney And Brad Pitt’s Ocean’s Thirteen (2007)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell

Ocean’s Thirteen, starring George Clooney, Brad Pitt, A Pacino, Elliott Gould, Andy Garcia, 2007 

Recently I noted in a review of what amounted in the end to the first film in the Ocean trilogy and what might serve as a reason for its popularity that everybody loves a con, loves a con artist at least since old Herman Melville made a big literary deal out of such characters in his 19^th century novel The Confidence Man. I was also careful to mention that statement that everybody loves a con, a con artist as long as that personage is conning somebody else and not one’s good self-or one’s own. I also said that an appreciation of a con, and of a master con artist goes down much better if the con is on some super-rich guy or gal who made his or her dough by walking over a pile of people, hell, maybe a pile of corpses. That latter premise is what made George Clooney’s remake of the 1960s Frank Sinatra-led classic con story Ocean’s Eleven so satisfying and perhaps with a little less satisfaction since this road had already been travelled this third film in the trilogy, Ocean’s Thirteen. 

Here’s the “skinny” on the con in this final con of the series. Reuben Tiskoff, played by Elliott Gould, who fronted Danny Ocean, played by George Clooney, dough in the original caper, the dough for the big caper against his nemesis Terry Benedict, played by Andy Garcia, has been stiffed yet again by a partner who wanted to grab all the greed dough and glory for himself. (Reuben’s track record making me wonder how he survived in Vegas for two minutes and had not been ground to dust for coffee and cakes long ago in the dog eat dog gaming world.) This time Reuben took the hit from Willie Bank, played by Al Pacino (playing his usual gruff stage persona), who owned a sting of five star hotel-casinos around the world (five diamond-literarily a fact which helps push the plot along which) and wanted no partner’s to hog his glory as he opened a high-end resort in Vega. 

I mentioned in the review of Ocean’s Eleven  that in the old days if you wanted to run a scam you brought in a bunch of heavy yeggs and mugs and strong-armed your way around the caper. Not these high tech days. Now you need tech savvy guys with brains and cunning (and a little old time off-hand muscle never hurts). The caper here depends on trying to financially ruin Bank and therefore handing over his operation to his board leaving him flat-footed. On the side also take a few hundred million by stealing his precious five star diamond collection from his previous hotelier efforts. The deal here is to rig all the games in the casino so that the high end rollers take Bank’s shirt off his back. Without them returning to inevitably lose their dough the next minute (remember the first rule of gaming-the house in the end always wins). How to do that. Easy-simulate an earthquake which will have the customers-high- end or low fleeing like rats for the exits.

Danny has a pretty good revenge idea working here this time (and don’t forget the added theft of the diamonds which is the crew’s service charge-fair enough, right).Except the big time high tech drilling machine that was to be used to create the earthquake broke down. While Danny and the boys are good they don’t have enough dough to get a new one. Enter one Terry Benedict (another guy whose ability to survive in Vegas   I wonder about), you remember Terry, played by Andy Garcia, the “mark” in the big casino heist of the proceeds of three casinos-his. He fronts the dough for a cut of the “profits” since he and Bank had a falling out earlier in their careers.  So the “job” got done on old Bank, he lost control of his casino-hotel, lost his five star ratings and his nice diamond collection. This third film had the weakest plot line so it was just as well that the director called it quits at a trilogy. Yeah, but revenge is sweet and I cried not one tear for this palooka Bank. Of course Danny and his crew were not targeting me-or mine.