Review for Ocean's Thirteen

Introduction

My stupidity knows no bounds. Last year, a certain confectionery company ran a promotion for free DVDs with their sweets, each bag would have a code inside that may just be redeemable for a movie on a certain website. Six quid, six quid of chocolates were consumed before I got a winning number, and with hardly the broadest selection of discs on offer, I chose Ocean's Thirteen. The week I redeemed the offer, I checked on a price comparison website, and found it retailing for £3. So here I am, out of pocket, fatter, and now in possession of a film that I wouldn't have had any interest in purchasing, had not the word 'Free' been invoked. Of course the reason I picked this film was Ocean's Eleven, the 2001 remake that came and reinvigorated the heist genre, bringing a whole new generation of conmen and hustlers to the screen, begetting sequels, homage, and TV shows. I loved that first film. I haven't seen Ocean's Twelve by the way; the reviews scared me off. Actually I did get a snip of it on television once or twice, and the bleach bypass look applied to that film killed any residual interest I might have had in it. So Ocean's Thirteen is my first return to the world of Danny Ocean and the long con, and any continuity goofs in this review are my own.


Danny warned Reuben against it, but Reuben is a man of pride, of status, he's a man who wants to be back in the casino business. Which is why he set aside his principles and went into partnership with Willy Bank, owner of a whole chain of hotels, and who is soon to open the biggest and best new establishment in Las Vegas. Willy Bank is venal, avaricious, unprincipled, and worst of all, he lacks taste. Naturally he muscled Reuben out of his share of the deal, a manoeuvre that gave poor Reuben a heart attack. So now Danny is putting together the crew to get some measure of vengeance against Willy Bank, and $500 million on his new casino's opening night is a pretty hefty measure. It's the most intricate and complex plan yet, and it will need a good amount of seed capital. It means going to the last person on earth they can think of for help; it means going to Terry Benedict.

Picture

It was back in around 2007-08 when the HD revolution was pretty much imposed on us by the companies. There was quite a bit of inertia in a DVD community opposed to such a rapid upgrade, and rumours began to circulate that DVD transfers were being deliberately degraded to make the corresponding HD-DVDs and Blu-rays look better. I don't know if there is any truth in that rumour, but Ocean's Thirteen's 2.40:1 anamorphic transfer looks terrible. I didn't like the de-saturated look for Ocean's Twelve, by far preferring the lush and vivid grandness of Ocean's Eleven. Ocean's Thirteen returns to that look, but on this DVD, the colours are blown out beyond reason, over-saturated and intense, overwhelming any detail, and making it look as if I was watching a film starring a set of David Dickinson clones. This may have been the original filmmakers' intention, and since I didn't see the film in the cinema, I can't be certain of that. Either way it looks positively dreadful.


Another annoyance is that this version scrubs the captions from the film, and uses player generated captions instead. A film should look as it did in the cinema, and this just makes it look tacky.

Sound

You have a choice between DD 5.1, and DD 2.0 Surround English, along with DD 2.0 Audio Descriptive. Subtitles are provided in English, Icelandic, Hebrew and Arabic. The dialogue is mostly clear, although I was glad of the subtitles for a couple of mumbled utterances. The use of conmen slang that so gave the original movie an authentic feel is overdone a little this time around, and I gave up trying to decipher it. David Holmes once again provides the music and it's a nice score that suits the film well, as well as providing a couple of thematic reminiscences of the original.

Extras

Pop the disc in, and you're presented with a set of menu pages to choose your nation of residence. The United Kingdom is on the final page. It doesn't matter which one you choose, you still get English menus, and the film is always the same. However, you will skip all those trailers that autoplay otherwise.

With the UK menu, the disc then autoplays with a trailer for the wonders of HD-DVD and Blu-ray, followed by trailers for The Good German and No Reservations.

The animated menus are sparse, and the extras even more so. By far the most substantive is Vegas: An Opulent Illusion. This lasts 23 minutes and offers a guided tour to Las Vegas, its history, the casinos, and the gamblers. Jerry Weintraub Walk and Talk, is a 2½-minute, blink and you miss it, wander around the set. Finally there are 4½ minutes of additional scenes.

Conclusion

Ocean's Twelve got a pretty dismal critical reception, in fact as I recall, it was derided as a stinker by most critics, self-indulgent and flat, and I'm sure that afterwards there must have been some kind of head-scratching as to just what went wrong. When it came to Ocean's Thirteen, there must have been a temptation to go back to what had worked, to stick to the strengths of the franchise. Which is probably why Ocean's Thirteen plays as a remake of Ocean's Eleven. It's another casino heist in Las Vegas, it's once more motivated by revenge, and once more, a group of amiable, good-natured crooks get together to swindle a mean-spirited and slimy crook. It's fun, it's entertaining, and it kept my bum glued to my seat, and my eyes averted from any clocks, watches, sundials or timepieces for the duration. Ocean's Thirteen is also a pale shadow of the original (remake) movie, lacking in energy, vitality, and excitement. It has all the signs of franchise fatigue, of going through the motions, of relying on familiarity more than originality. It's not really worth the calories I piled on to obtain it.


The main problem is cast bloat. It's hard enough to have eleven central characters, but with Ocean's Thirteen referencing the previous and the first movies, there's no room for character development at all. It really just feels like an extended sequence of cameos, and there's certainly not enough space to develop an antipathy for Pacino's Willy Bank, in the way there was for Terry Benedict in the first film. That's even with this third film ditching Tess and the Catherine Zeta Jones character from the second film. Also, there is never that edge of peril there was in the first film. With Ocean's Eleven, you always had the inevitability of consequences, should Danny and his crew get caught. There was a genteel malice to the Benedict character, and the possibility was there that things could go wrong. Part of that is due to the aforementioned character development, but part of it was that Ocean's Eleven played it comparatively straight. With Ocean's Thirteen's lack of character development removing the malice, it certainly didn't need comedy gimmicks like false noses and itching powder thrown into the mix. I stayed resolutely away from the edge of my seat for this film.


Another disappointment is that there are no surprises in this film. The first film had twists and reversals, little flashbacks and asides that revealed little 'Oh Wow!' moments throughout the movie. And then right at the end, there's a great big revelation, as the wool is finally pulled away from your eyes and you realise how it was actually done. In Ocean's Thirteen, they tell us what they are going to do and how, they then proceed to do what they planned, they come up against obstacles and reversals which they resolve, and other than one minor plot twist, it all goes pretty much by the book. Which, let's face it, isn't what you want to see a heist movie for. Fortunately the familiarity of the characters, the pace and the liveliness of the script do much to cancel out this shortcoming.


Ocean's Thirteen is a fun little movie, entertaining enough to keep the attention, and providing just enough satisfaction that you don't lament the loss of two hours of your life. While it may have a good few flaws to it, it still has a top quality cast, and let's face it, where else are you going to see George Clooney looking like Freddie Mercury? But thematically, the franchise is looking tired, and compared to the first film, this third one is verging on self-parody. They say that there isn't going to be an Ocean's Fourteen. I can only say that is a good thing.