Oceans 13

 We’ve had Oceans 11, Oceans 12, and now we’re at Ocean’s 13…

Oceans 12 had its moments but it didn’t really work for me, it’s attempt at being more high stakes resulted in it being more confusing and less interesting, relying on a final twist at the end to make the narrative work.

So with new writers at the helm, Oceans 13 takes things back to basics, it did OK at the box office, continuing the diminishing returns of the franchise, but has a better critical rating at 70% and average 6.4/10. But here’s my take on it

Ocean’s 13 begins with one of the crew, Reubin Tishkoff (Elliott Gould) make a deal with Casino Mogul Willy Bank (yes, that’s his actual name in this – stop laughing) (Al Pacino) he screws him over and gives Reubin a heart attack, so his friends, minus Tess, come and vow revenge. They plan to ruin his casino opening and force him out of his company, but a job this big with so many moving parts, they’re gonna need help from the one person they can’t trust, Terry Benedict.

Once again, Rusty (Brad Pitt), Danny (George Clooney), and Linus (Matt Damon) get the Lion’s share of the work and with 13 members of the cast now, the problem of many of them getting very little to do remains and if anything is exacerbated in this film. There’s a subplot in Mexico that goes absolutely nowhere other than being weirdly racist? And getting a couple of the players out of the script for a time.

Basher (Don Cheadle) spends most of his time with an underground drill, Frank (Bernie Mac) is enjoying being a decoy reviewer for the Hotel. Frank… operates some dominos tables, Yen, outruns an elevator, Linus’ dad, Robert (Bob Einstein) is involved in this for a hot minute. Have we got to 13 yet, I’m losing track. Benedict wants diamonds that he could probably just buy himself… I get that wants to screw over the casino and doesn’t care much about screwing over Danny but risking it all for the diamonds is really dumb.

The Nightfox exists in this movie for a couple of seconds, remember when he was a master thief? He got played really easily in this one. You know what, screw it, most of the rest of the cast are forgettable and the cast is so big they can’t play off one-another. And the number of moving parts in this heist make it difficult to follow.  

I get the intent the intent of going back to being a heist film with a truly hateable villain as the main target of the robbery, but this robbery has so many players and is so vast and complicated its small wonder the next film decided to scale back with only 8 main leads. And anyone complaining about them being all women in that film, the only woman in this entire film is the one they have to seduce to get the diamonds.

The film lives on the actors and luckily, they have a talented cast, because without them this an overcomplicated mess of a film that fails to allow us to get to know the characters beyond the surface and hence care about their struggles.

Rating 50/100