Oceans Thirteen

Oceans Thirteen really made up for Oceans Twelve being so bad. A must see.

This was a big improvement on Ocean's Twelve which, to be honest, was absolute dirge. While Thirteen never reaches the quality of Eleven, it succeeds by going back to the tried and tested format that made Eleven successful.

The key decisions made by the producers/directors were to set the film back in Las Vegas, having failed when taking the action to Europe, and leaving out the two female leads from Ocean's Twelve (Julia Roberts and Catherine Zeta Jones), although I have since been told that they were asked to return but refused.

The reasons behind the heist in Thirteen were much more coherent, believable and sentimental than the dubious effort in Twelve so that, once the film had been set-up in the first 20 minutes, I could just sit back and enjoy the clever tricks and twists & turns develop for the rest of the film. There are some great moments: The unfortunate hotel inspector, the clever interchange of card dispensing machines and the Mexican plastics factory to name but three. These moments don't come thick and fast but there's enough humour in between them to keep things ticking over. The heist concept is also refreshingly different.

The main characters are good without any of them shining out. Andy Garcia gets a good cameo and Al Pacino's character is refreshing, if a little one-dimensional. Two characters from Ocean's Twelve returned unnecessarily: Roman Nagel (played very smoothly by Eddie Izzard) and Francois Toulour, the latter being a particular weak point, as he was in Twelve.

Overall, if you loved Ocean's Eleven but were disappointed with Twelve (as I was) I would recommend this film as a nice way to round off the trilogy. If you thought Ocean's Eleven was OK but nothing more, this film will offer you little extra, and you'll probably end up disappointed.