Ocean's Thirteen

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 Scott Caan Don Cheadle Casey Affleck Ellen Barkin Bernie Mac Eddie Izzard with Elliott Gould and Al Pacino
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
Official website • IMDb • Allmovie

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]

Plot

Reuben Tishkoff (Elliott Gould) and Las Vegas' most hated businessman, Willy Bank (Al Pacino), are building a new hotel and casino in Las Vegas, a deal Danny Ocean (George Clooney) initially warns Reuben to avoid. After having secured crucial deals for Bank, Reuben is strongarmed into signing over his share of the new establishment to Bank, who leaves him with only a $10,000 poker chip. Looking at the chip, Reuben notices that Bank has changed the name of the hotel from "The Midas" to his own name, "The Bank". Reuben suffers a heart attack from the stress related to this financial loss. The remainder of Ocean's Eleven—Danny Ocean (George Clooney), Rusty Ryan (Brad Pitt), Linus Caldwell (Matt Damon), Basher Tarr (Don Cheadle), Frank Catton (Bernie Mac), Virgil Malloy (Casey Affleck), Turk Malloy (Scott Caan), "The Amazing" Yen (Shaobo Qin), Saul Bloom (Carl Reiner), and Livingston Dell (Eddie Jemison)— are gathered around Reuben. They decide to offer Bank a "Billy Martin" (presumably a "do-over", a reference to Martin's repeated hirings/firings/rehirings with the New York Yankees) or "face the consequences" of his actions. He turns down the offer, happily saying to Ocean that Reuben "should just roll over and die". Thus, the team sets out to avenge the injustice committed against Reuben. Tess Ocean and Isabel Lahiri are notably absent from this plot—left behind with Danny's simple explanation that "it's not their fight".

First, each of Bank's other hotels has already received the prestigious Five Diamond Award, the highest honor granted to a hotel. The team decides to prevent The Bank from winning it. Saul, under the name "Kensington Chubb", discreetly poses as the reviewer, getting Bank's attention by dropping his review folder exposing the "Five Diamond" logo. Believing Saul to be the reviewer and thus a VIP, Bank orders his entire staff to see to Saul's every need. Meanwhile, Danny's team engineers a series of mishaps for the real reviewer (David Paymer), a self-described "very unimportant person." Thanks to Danny's crew, he is shown to a room that they have contaminated with bedbugs (among other things), gets food poisoning at a hotel restaurant, and is finally evicted by rude, brutish security guards (Virgil and Turk Malloy in disguise). As the reviewer leaves, he thanks Bank for having him evicted. Bank, of course, ignores this "nobody."

Second, they rig the casino so that all the players win huge amounts of money on opening night, and, in turn, Bank will lose ownership of the hotel; he is expected by his board of investors to make $500 million in the first quarter to maintain ownership. It's Virgil's task to rig the casino dice at the source—a Mexican factory—so that the team can manipulate them at the table using devices disguised as Zippo cigarette lighters. However, appalled by the dreadful working conditions in the factory and low pay, Virgil leads the workers in a strike. Turk is later recruited into Virgil's plight when he goes down to Mexico to find out why the holdup. When the rest of the team discovers that the workers' meager demands amount to a lump sum of only $36,000, they agree to write a postdated check for that amount to end the strike. The employees go back to work and the Malloys succeed in rigging the dice. Meanwhile, Ocean's team has recruited Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia)—who also has a grudge against Bank—to trick Bank into buying a rigged domino table run by Frank, who poses as a domino dealer at a gaming expo. With all these devices in place, Danny enlists a teenager working at The Bank to program a trapdoor into the slot machine configuration. Livingston provides Rusty with a counting pattern that can be used to rig a slot machine to pay out a huge progressive jackpot and, after the process is completed, he lets another player take over the slot machine. Finally, with the help of the thirteenth man, Roman Nagel (Eddie Izzard), Livingston rigs blackjack dealing machines in favor of the player(s).

To ensure that all games played at the casino are neither rigged nor tampered with by players, Bank has installed a state-of-the-art artificial intelligence security system known as "Greco"—a computer that reads biofeedback data (such as pulse, pupil dilation, etc.) from players in real time, enabling it to determine whether a win was legitimate or expected. Nagel informs Danny and Rusty that the Greco is "housed in an impregnable room", and that "short of walking in with a...magnetron around your neck", there is no way to shut it down. The problem is that they would need to shut it down in order for everything to go according to plan through a simulated earthquake. The Greco takes three minutes to reboot, during which the team will use all their tricks and riggings to help the other gamblers win as much money as possible, and after the reboot, the team plans to simulate a second earthquake to scare everyone into cashing out and leaving with their winnings instead of continuing to be taken by the house. In order to accomplish all this, the team will use the drill used to dig the Chunnel from the English side. Unfortunately, the drill breaks down before they can use it, so they need to acquire the drill that dug from the French side to finish the job.

The team is unable to come up with the funds to purchase the replacement, so they reluctantly approach Benedict to acquire the capital they need to finance the drill for their "exit strategy"—using the drill to simulate an earthquake will force evacuation of the hotel. Benedict is only on board if the team meets his demands: first, he expects the crew to double his investment of $36 million for the drill, and repay him before they do anything else; second, he wants them to steal the things that Bank values most: his collection of diamonds, including the Five Diamond Awards he won previously, which are stored in a glass case in the middle of his penthouse. Though the team had considered stealing the diamonds earlier, they decided it would be near-impossible to get through the security that Bank designed to protect them in addition to pulling off the other jobs they had in mind. Nevertheless, they decide they have no other choice but to succumb to Benedict's demand.

With the problem of the drill behind them, a plane arrives at a local airstrip. Yen, under the alias of Mr. Weng, a high-roller and rich businessman, is introduced to Abigail Sponder (Ellen Barkin), Bank's personal assistant, by Linus, disguised with a distinctive nose, who acts as his business manager. Once in his room at The Bank, Yen uses his unique talents to access the elevator shafts and air conditioning ducts, but discovers that indirect access to the penthouse (e.g. by tunneling or using explosives) from above or below will be borderline impossible. Instead, Linus uses a pheromone patch called "the Gilroy" to seduce Sponder, who leads him to the penthouse for more privacy.

Livingston is seemingly caught "rigging" the card machines by the FBI; an agent (Bob Einstein) tells Bank that replacement machines will be sent over by the manufacturer; however, Livingston hadn't actually tampered with the machines: the replacements were the actual rigged ones. From Livingston's fingerprints, Bank's security team obtains a list of known associates: all of the Ocean's Eleven team. This is subsequently sent to Bank's office. Basher, dressed up as the stunt man for the hotel's opening show, distracts Bank while Virgil and Turk modify the downloaded names and faces so that the team's cover is preserved.

Meanwhile, the drill is activated, causing a small earthquake that fails to shut down the Greco. Concerned, Bank hurries down to the Greco's secure command center. Bank gets a call on his new cell phone (procured as a gift by Sponder), which should be impossible in the reinforced room. Unfortunately for Bank and the Greco, the phone (which was actually supplied to Sponder by Danny's crew) was modified to include a magnetron, activated with a false call: "Plan B." This shuts down the Greco and it takes three minutes and twenty seconds to reboot. The rigged games are all activated. Team members in the casino, including Danny, Rusty, Saul, Yen, Frank, and a recovered Reuben, all make sure that everyone who plays at the casino wins, so the casino pays out millions. After a montage of everyone winning at the rigged games, the Greco reboots. Virgil and Turk activate the tunnelling machine again and another earthquake is simulated, prompting everyone in the casino to cash in their chips and evacuate, taking all their "winnings" with them.

Upstairs, the FBI agent abruptly interrupts Linus and Abigail and arrests Linus. As Linus is led away, the agent is revealed to be his successful criminal father Bobby Caldwell, who is also in on the scheme. When the two reach the rooftop helipad to leave, Francois Toulour (Vincent Cassel), alias "the Night Fox", the antagonist from Ocean's Twelve, reveals himself, having followed the whole crew from the start in partnership with Benedict. At gunpoint, Linus hands Toulour the stolen diamonds. The gun, as he finds out shortly, was not loaded. Toulour escapes, but the diamonds Linus handed over were actually the fake ones. Shortly after, the team circumvents the impregnable display case by simply stealing the entire casing from the hotel, along with a good-sized chunk of the ceiling, with the help of explosives placed there by Linus and a helicopter.

Danny confronts Bank, telling him he broke the rules and needs to learn from what he's done. Danny drives the point in when he says "You shook Sinatra's hand, you should know better." Saul deliberately walks past the two and Bank realizes that "Kensington Chubb" was not actually the Five-Star hotel reviewer. Bank tries to threaten Danny, saying he knows people, highly invested in his survival, who really know how to hurt. Danny responded calmly, saying "I know all the guys that you'd hire to come after me... they like me better than they like you." Danny then says that he figures Bank would not go to the police. Danny and Saul leave the casino and Bank watches the helicopter fly away with his diamonds. Toulour also sees the helicopter, realizing once again that he stole a replica. Minutes later, back at their place, the guys watch Bank's fireworks go off. Danny gives Reuben the deed to 4.6 acres (19,000 m²) of land on the Las Vegas Strip. The next day, Danny meets Benedict at his office and confronts him about hiring Toulour. As punishment for Benedict's double-crossing, Danny informs him that he donated Benedict's share of the money to "Camp to Belong", a camp for under-privileged kids, in Benedict's name. Benedict is obviously not pleased.

Days later, in the McCarran International Airport, Danny, Rusty, and Linus watch as Benedict gives an interview on The Oprah Winfrey Show, announcing that he donated the money because he was touched by the kids. The three go their separate ways. Linus, the first to leave, has finally gotten a "part" in his father's work. Danny is the second to leave. After they have left, Rusty decides to hit the slots one last time. He starts to put some coins in the machine, but decides to give up his seat to the beleaguered hotel reviewer who happened to be at the airport. It turns out Rusty used the hacking coin sequence to rig the machine and the hotel reviewer wins $11 million, and Rusty walks off smiling while a crowd gathers (this is significant also because Saul and Turk had earlier discussed how he would get the "Susan B. Anthony" at the airport, with Saul claiming he would undergo the reviewer's plight if he were paid 11 million dollars).

Cast

Ocean's Thirteen

• George Clooney as Danny Ocean
• Brad Pitt as Rusty Ryan
• Matt Damon as Linus Caldwell
• Don Cheadle as Basher Tarr
• Bernie Mac as Frank Catton
• Casey Affleck as Virgil Malloy
• Scott Caan as Turk Malloy
• Shaobo Qin as "The Amazing" Yen
• Carl Reiner as Saul Bloom
• Eddie Jemison as Livingston Dell
• Elliott Gould as Reuben Tishkoff
• Eddie Izzard as Roman Nagel
• Andy Garcia as Terry Benedict

Others

• Al Pacino as Willy Bank
• Vincent Cassel as François "The Nightfox" Toulour
• Ellen Barkin as Abigail Sponder
• Bob Einstein as Agent Robert "Bobby" Caldwell
• Olga Sosnovska as Debbie
• David Paymer as the V.U.P. (the real Five Diamond reviewer)
• Julian Sands as Greco Montgomery
• Angel Oquendo as Guard Ortega
• Jerry Weintraub as Denny Shields

Cultural references

• The opening logo sequence was an homage to the opening of WOR-TV's late afternoon movie program, The 4'O-Clock Movie, which aired during the 70s and 80s. In fact, the theme song to the program (The Riviera Affair by Neil Richardson) was used in the opening sequence. Also, the logos were blue, which referenced the opening logos in the first film of the remake trilogy, and the background was changing colors, which referenced the opening logos in the second film of the remake trilogy.

• There are three scenes, worth mentioning, that directly reference The Godfather.

• The first scene takes place as Danny Ocean initially tries to strong arm Willy Bank early in the film. Danny explains himself to Bank by stating "What I want... what is most important to me is that Reuben's share gets restored"; A direct reference to the scene in The Godfather where Michael Corleone (another character portrayed by Al Pacino) is meeting with Virgil Solozzo & Captain McCluskey.

• The next scene is when Danny and the crew are explaining to Reuben that they could not go through with the plan, due to their budget. Reuben says to Ocean "I hear cars coming and leaving, and Linus crying; why don't you tell me what everyone else seems to know," almost the exact words Vito Corleone said before learning that his son, Santino Corleone, was killed.

• The golden Samsung cell phone is also an homage to the solid gold AT&T telephone passed around the table when Michael Corleone, Hyman Roth, and some other prominent American business leaders meet in Havana, Cuba to discuss their investments in The Godfather, Part II.

• There are at least five references made to the original Ocean's Eleven. When Willy Bank is screwing Reuben out of their deal, Reuben claims that they've both been around long enough to shake Sinatra's hand, and Tishkoff states that there's a code among guys who've done that. After the heist, Danny tells Bank that he shook Sinatra's hand and he should've known better. Shortly after this, when the Eleven are celebrating, the song This Town by Frank Sinatra is heard. Sinatra is referenced due to the fact that he portrayed the original Danny Ocean in the 1960s version.

• Later on, when Rusty and Danny are trying to explain a soft opening to Saul, Saul claims that he went to the opening of the Flamingo and there were no "soft openings" back then. Also, Danny and Rusty are talking a few hours before the grand opening. Rusty reminisces about the old days of Vegas and mentions the Sands. The Sands and the Flamingo were two of the five casinos robbed in the original movie.

• At the end of the film, when Rusty and Danny are about to go their separate ways in the airport, Rusty tells Danny to "keep the weight off in between next time". This is in reference to George Clooney's weight gain and loss between the filming of Ocean's Twelve and Ocean's Thirteen. As a retort to this comment, Danny tells Rusty he should "settle down and have a couple kids". This is a reference to Brad Pitt's relationship with Angelina Jolie and the fact that they have adopted children together.

• What Carl Reiner's character does with the wig loosely resembles what his character Alan Brady does on The Dick Van Dyke Show, although this was probably a coincidence.

• At one point, while talking to his father on the phone, Linus refers to the large fake nose he will wear as a "Brody". Presumably this is in reference to the pronounced nose of Adrien Brody.

• When talking to George Clooney from London Matt Damon says, "Yeah, I think I have a name but I don't even know if it's right." This scene is an allusion to the Jason Bourne trilogy staring Damon.

Reception

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]

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]

References

External links

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

• Official site
• Ocean's Thirteen at the Internet Movie Database