Review of Ocean's Thirteen (2007) by Harry W — 12 Feb 2013

Ocean's Thirteen significantly improves over Ocean's Twelve, but does have some negativity carry over from it and fails to live up the the standard set by Ocean's Eleven.

Namely the fact that the plot contains a lot of complication in it's numerous gadgets and casino-scamming ideals, and with so many characters having their events key to the story in some way or another, the required amount of dedication for the audience to maintain absolute focus may wear them down, as it happened to me. I began to forget where whoever was and eventually I just stopped caring. Ocean's Thirteen didn't seem to provide many reasons why I should.

Ocean's Thirteen lacks any sufficient reason why I should remember it, since it becomes less based on a heist and more on a character-driven tale of vengeance. With the Oceans trilogy however, this is not what the audience will be looking for, and I was rather disappointed by that.

The things I did appreciate were the cast who were as good as ever, and even the new cast members were good.

Al Pacino plays a good villain , this time resorting more to his manipulative characteristics than any physically threatening characteristics. He still has plenty of talent left in him.

Ellen Barkin also shone out and displayed a talent for strong delivery and still a certain amount of sex appeal. She still has the ability to seduce, rather nicely.

Also, Ocean s 13 features good film editing and a rather stylistic intro and as always, a good soundtrack.

So Oceans Thirteen is an improvement over it's predecessor, but is still unimpressive, save from the additions of Al Pacino and Ellen Barkin to the cast.