Oceans Thirteen; the final (hopefully) film in the Oceans trilogy. We've had the oh so smooth first film, the dodgy middle film filled with cliches, bad gags and smugness, so what does the third film hold for us. Well thankfully not a repeat of the second film. Instead it reverts back to the easy charm that made the first film such a winner. We're again looking at a way to bring down a corrupt casino boss (Al Pacino), we're enlisting the help of the team (with some repeat offenders from previous films), and thankfully we're leaving any element of romance at the front door.
The Basic principal is that Reuben was originally going to open a Casino with Al Pacino's 'Bank', but Bank betrays him and forces him to be bought out of his shares, and his land so that Bank can make all the profit and reap all the rewards himself. As a result Reuben finds himself ill and the doctor's prognoses is that unless his mood improves, and he can have a reason to survive, there's a good chance he won't. So after giving Bank a chance to reverse his decision and make amends, the boys embark on a way to ruin Bank, by making his new Hotel/Casino loose money, and loose acclaim. They enlist the help of Andy Garcia's Terry Benedict and Eddie Izzard's Roman Nagal and set about the toughest challenge yet.
The film is quite clever, instead of stealing from the Casino like they did in the first film, they instead choose to simply rig all the games so that they pay out big to the public and then move the public out before they can put the money back into the casino. This presents a unique set of challenges. Alongside this there is the prestige gained from winning the five diamond award for the hotel, an honour that Bank has managed for each of his hotels so far. So the team must also rig this and sabotage the hotel so that he doesn't get the award, bruising not just his purse, but also his prestige.
The film moves along in a light hearted manner, with humour and style to spare. But it does fall down a little in its ambition. Once again we see Vincent Cassell throughout the film, but with a screen time of maybe 5 minutes in total (being generous) he is once again sorely underused, and indeed anyone could have been that person, there was no reason to bring him back except to avoid having to explain who he was. It's a shame, and perhaps if he'd just not been there at all the film would have played out much better. It is also a bit derivative of the first film. I appreciate the efforts that have been made to avoid simply remaking the first film. The differences are there, and they are good, but sometimes you feel as though the actors and characters are perhaps falling back into their comfort zones and living up the characters rather than being them.
Overall this is a fine effort, and a good film, very enjoyable. It's not a classic, but it's a nice end to the trilogy, especially after the awful middle. I hope that they don't make any more films, particularly now that Bernie Mac is dead, I think that they could never capture the magic of the first film again, and whilst this effort doesn't, it makes a damn good effort and ending it here makes it a worthy trilogy overall.
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