Ocean's Thirteen

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Ocean's Thirteen
Directed by	Steven Soderbergh
Produced by	Jerry Weintraub
Written by	Brian Koppelman David Levien
Narrated by	George Clooney
Starring	George Clooney Brad Pitt Matt Damon Andy Garcia Don Cheadle Bernie Mac with Ellen Barkin and Al Pacino Casey Affleck Scott Caan Eddie Izzard Eddie Jemison Shaobo Qin with Carl Reiner and Elliott Gould
Music by	David Holmes
Cinematography	Steven Soderbergh
Editing by	Stephen Mirrione
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release date(s)	June 8, 2007
Running time	113 min.
Country	USA
Language	English
Budget	$85,000,000
Gross revenue	$311,312,624
Preceded by	Ocean's Twelve

Ocean's Thirteen is a 2007 heist film directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring an ensemble cast. It is the third (and reportedly final)^[1] in the Soderbergh series following the 2004 sequel Ocean's Twelve and the 2001 film Ocean's Eleven, which itself was a remake of the 1960 Rat Pack film of the same name. All of the cast members reprised their roles from the previous installments except for Julia Roberts and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Al Pacino and Ellen Barkin joined the cast as their new targets.

It was released on June 8, 2007 (known as World Ocean Day), in the United States,^[2] although it was released in several countries in the Middle East on June 6.^[3] Filming began in July 2006 in Las Vegas and Los Angeles, based on a script by Brian Koppelman and David Levien.^[4]

[edit] Plot

Veteran confidence man (and partner in the two prior "Ocean's" capers) Reuben Tishkoff (Elliott Gould), in an effort to legitimize himself and secure himself financially in his later years, partners himself with notorious hotelier Willy Bank (Al Pacino) to build a major hotel and casino in Vegas called "The Midas". Bank double-crosses Reuben by modifying the partnership in the final contract so as to freeze Reuben out and subtly threatening his life, forcing Reuben to sign over his half of the business. Reuben suffers a heart attack, and is bedridden, seemingly having lost the will to live. Reuben's friend Danny Ocean (George Clooney) attempts to persuade Bank to reconsider the deal, but Bank refuses. Danny gathers the same group of con men seen in Ocean's 11 and Ocean's 12 to exact revenge on Bank, by making the casino (Now renamed "The Bank") an immediate flop on its opening night.

The group launch a multi-faceted attack on Bank. The first stage is prevent Bank from winning a Five Diamond Award, the highest award that a hotel can win issued by the fictional Royal Review board. They bribe the Bank's concierge with a job offer for a casino resort in Macao, and having Saul Bloom (Carl Reiner) pose as the Royal Review hotel reviewer. Bank is counting on receiving another "Five Diamond Award" rating for this hotel, as he has for all his other hotels. The real reviewer (David Paymer) is made as miserable as possible, the crew contaminating his room with horrible odors, freezing him out of the casino's best restaurant (by bribing the maître d'), giving him food poisoning and a horrible (but harmless) rash, then (with two members of the crew disguised as Bank security men) evicting him from the hotel. Ocean very publicly 'steals' Bank's high profile, rich guests (known in Las Vegas parlance as 'whales') having them leave The Bank for other accommodations. These are just misdirection and harassment tactics, as the crew work towards their ultimate goal: taking all of Bank's money. The second stage is that the crew will plan to rig the gaming machines to give off massive payouts to the opening night crowd so that Bank will not be able to make even $500 million, the amount he needs to make in order to retain ownership of the hotel. They infiltrate a dice-making factory in Mexico to contaminate and rig the dice for the whole casino at the source. They also plan to modify the card dealing machines and rig slot machines to pay off on a specific sequence of coin drops.

While the caper largely goes according to plan, some complications arise. The Mexican factory suffers a strike and a lockout by management. Livingston (Eddie Jemison) cannot make the card dealing machines work as planned. Worst of all, they discover that Bank has set up an elaborate and supposedly unbeatable artificial intelligence system called the "Greco" that would discover any manipulation of the gambling machines, and can identify cheaters by use of biometric readings. They consult their con artist friend and technical expert Roman Nagel (Eddie Izzard) for help. Nagel determines that while the Greco cannot be beaten, it can be disabled for several minutes by activating a magnetron near the mainframe. Using Bank's own greed against him, the crew acquires a prototype cell phone that they know Bank has been asking for. The crew secretly installs a magnetron device in the phone that can be activated to disable the Greco. While this will allow the casino players to break the bank, it will not make them leave. To ensure the winners do not simply put their money back on the gambling tables, the crew must simulate a disaster, such as an earthquake. To do so requires the purchase of the underground boring machines that constructed the Chunnel to create a fake tremor that evacuates the building. When the cost of acquiring the machines proves more than the crew can afford, they recruit millionaire casino owner Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia), the 'mark' of the first Ocean's caper. Benedict, who loathes Bank for being classless and soiling the reputation of all casino owners, agrees to help on two conditions - he is reimbursed double the money he fronts for the operation, and the crew must steal Bank's collection of diamond necklaces, (Bank has bought one for each of his other Royal Review "Five Diamond Award" winning casinos around the world). While the crew first balk at the idea of adding a jewel heist to the plan at the last minute, they concoct a scheme - planting young Linus (Matt Damon) in a position to seduce Bank's attractive (but slightly older) assistant Abigail Sponder (Ellen Barkin).

While the rest of the crew works at their various tasks, Basher (Don Cheadle) has been sending Reuben heartfelt letters to encourage his recovery. Basher, stuck manning the boring machine, asks Linus to read them to Reuben, but Linus is embarrassed to read the sentiments aloud, and leaves them on Reuben's nightstand. Reuben eventually reads them himself, and slowly regains his strength and reassurance. He finally finds the stamina to visit the Bank on opening night and watch the crew put the plan into action.

Most aspects of the plan work as expected. The Greco is disabled, the tremor evacuates the winners, and Linus succeeds in seducing Sponder and getting her to let him into the secure diamond room, on the top floor of the casino. However, other aspects fail catastrophically. FBI agents arrest Livingston, caught trying to plant the rigged card dealing machines. The rest of the crew narrowly avoids capture when Bank runs Livingston's fingerprints and attempts to determine Livingston's known criminal associates through the FBI Fingerprint database (which is highly illegal). Only the fast work of Basher (impersonating a stunt cyclist hired to perform at the casino opening) distracting Bank, and a quick hack of the database by Virgil Malloy (Casey Affleck) to alter the images of the crew to prevent Bank from uncovering the scheme. The FBI agents also arrest Linus. Linus and the lead FBI agent proceed to the roof of the casino.

It is then revealed that the FBI agent is in fact Linus' father, Bobby Caldwell (Bob Einstein). Caldwell has maintained a deep cover identity as an FBI agent. Livingston's arrest was part of the plan, as the actual rigged card machines are seen being put into place by Roman. Linus and Bobby await retrieval by Basher in a helicopter, but are confronted and held at gunpoint by François Toulour (Vincent Cassel), the European thief named the "Night Fox" they had encountered before. Toulour demands the diamonds from Linus. Toulour then parachutes off of the roof, seemingly with the diamonds. Linus, Caldwell, and Basher then steal the real diamonds by making off with the entire Diamond Award display case with the help of the helicopter and planted explosives. Toulour sees the helicopter fly off, and quickly discovers the diamonds he took from Linus are fakes. He throws them in a dumpster and walks away, muttering.

As the guests evacuate the hotel and his diamonds fly way, Bank realizes he has been duped, that Saul is not the hotel reviewer, his casino is bankrupt, and he has been ruined by Ocean. Bank threatens to send people after Danny and his crew. Ocean confidently informs him he knows that Bank, who achieved most of his success illegally, won't go to the police, and that nearly everyone else on the other side of the law holds a grudge against Bank and would rather remain in Danny's favor than aid Bank in his revenge. Ocean admonishes Bank by reminding him that he once shook Sinatra's hand, and should know better.

The group gives Reuben a deed to 4.6 acres (19,000 m²) of land on north end of the Las Vegas Strip to develop a new hotel. Danny reveals that he knew all along that Benedict hired Toulour to interfere with the plans. As 'revenge', Ocean takes Benedict's money and donates it to a children's charity which earns Benedict an appearance on "Oprah" obliging him to the role of heroic philanthropist.

As the group disperses, Rusty sets up the real Royal Review hotel reviewer to win a $11 million jackpot at the airport slot machines for his miserable experience at the Bank.

[edit] Cast

[edit] The Thirteen

1. George Clooney as Danny Ocean
2. Brad Pitt as Rusty Ryan
3. Matt Damon as Linus Caldwell/Lenny Pepperidge
4. Andy Garcia as Terry Benedict
5. Bernie Mac as Frank Catton
6. Don Cheadle Basher Tarr/Fender Roads
7. Casey Affleck as Virgil Malloy
8. Scott Caan as Turk Malloy
9. Eddie Izzard as Roman Nagel
10. Eddie Jemison as Livingston Dell
11. Shaobo Qin as "The Amazing" Yen/Mr. Weng
12. Carl Reiner as Saul Bloom/Kensington Chubb
13. Elliott Gould as Reuben Tishkoff

Julia Roberts and Catherine Zeta-Jones do not reprise their roles as Tess Ocean and Isabel Lahiri, their absence being explained by Danny, who repeatedly states "It's not their fight."

[edit] Others

• Ellen Barkin as Abigail Sponder
• Al Pacino as Willy Bank
• Vincent Cassel as François Toulour
• Bob Einstein as FBI Agent Robert "Bobby" Caldwell
• Olga Sosnovska as Debbie
• David Paymer as The VUP (The real Five Diamond Award reviewer.)
• Julian Sands as Greco Montgomery
• Angel Oquendo as Guard Ortega
• Jerry Weintraub as Danny Shields
• Scott L. Schwartz as "The Bruiser" (seen cashing a large amount of casino chips)
• John K. Peccer as Jesse Ghardi
• Oprah Winfrey as Herself

[edit] Reception

[edit] Box office performance

The film did well on its first weekend, reaching the top spot at the North American box office. Despite being opened in 250 more theaters than Ocean's Twelve, it had a slightly weaker opening weekend than the former, pulling in $36 million, compared to Twelve's $39 million opening weekend.^[5][6] As of December 30, 2007, Ocean's Thirteen has taken in $117.2 million in the U.S. alone. Overseas the film has made $194.2 million pushing its total worldwide gross to $311.4 million.^[7]

[edit] Critical reception

Critical reception to the movie has generally been positive with some critics liking the movie's style while others criticized it for being overly complex. Joel Siegel, in what would turn out to be his last review for Good Morning America, stated that if it had been the first movie, there still would have been a sequel. On the movie website Rotten Tomatoes, the movie has received an overall 70% score, while on Yahoo! Movies it garnered an average B grade.^[8][9] In his review for New York, David Edelstein wrote, "As the plotting gets knottier, his technique gets more fluid—the editing jazzier, the colors more luscious, the whip-pans more whizbang. It’s all anchored by Clooney, looking impudent, roguish, almost laughably handsome".^[10] Manohla Dargis, in her review for the New York Times, wrote, "Playing inside the box and out, he has learned to go against the grain while also going with the flow. In Ocean’s Thirteen he proves that in spades by using color like Kandinsky and hanging a funny mustache on Mr. Clooney’s luscious mug, having become a genius of the system he so often resists".^[11] However, Roger Ebert wrote, in his review for the Chicago Sun-Times, "Ocean's Thirteen proceeds with insouciant dialogue, studied casualness, and a lotta stuff happening, none of which I cared much about because the movie doesn't pause to develop the characters, who are forced to make do with their movie-star personas".^[12] Peter Bradshaw, in his review for The Guardian, wrote, "Sometimes we go to split-screen, and sometimes - whooaaa! - two of the split-screen frames are funkily showing the same thing. It is all quite meaningless. As if in an experimental novel by BS Johnson, the scenes could be reshuffled and shown in any order and it would amount to the same thing. There is no human motivation and no romance".^[13]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Ocean's Thirteen

• Official website
• Ocean's Thirteen at the Internet Movie Database
• Ocean's Thirteen at Allmovie