Ocean's 13: Toughts

Warning: The following piece contains an unusual amount of bracketed thoughts (but, then again, so does the movie). Huzzah, George Clooney and Brad Pitt are backs as… George Clooney and Brad Pitt (because, seriously, character names? come on) in Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s 13! Thank God. If there is one thing these three have been able to do with mixed results in the Ocean series, it's coaxing the audience down the thin line of Hollywood dreamland cool, while managing our seething jealousy: an unavoidable tendency to covet membership (even if it’s only as Scott Caan), and the desire to strangle them for their beauty, money, and throwaway life-style (oh, $37,000 is a hilariously low number to you, buddy, but is more than I’ve ever made in a year). Ocean’s 12 was such a slack effort, any cool the crew had was lost amid the self-awareness of everyone involved (we should never be expected to think Casey Affleck is cool, never). Thankfully, George and Brad's time spent abroad advancing the causes of suffering nations resulted somber reflections of their homeland (Hollywood) and inspired them to mend some damaged fences—in short, to take another stab at the whole Rat Pack thing. God bless celebrity guilt. It’s refreshing to go into a sequel (particularly the third in a series) where the principles feel like they have to earn their money, something that has been absent this summer. So they’re back, properly humbled, and working hard to steal Al Pacino’s reputation as a dynamite hotel magnate. Oh, and a lot of money. Why? Apparently Al was mean to Elliot Gould, which made him sleepy, which made George, Brad, and the boys very aghast, and which, calmly (no voices raised here, even from Pacino), turns to indignation, a kind of snobbery of thievery, when Pacino refuses to make things right (or as they say in Vegas: a “Billy Martin” (?)—whatever it doesn’t really matter). In fact, much of what happens in the film doesn’t matter, but it sure looks cool and goes down like a sweet sorbet. An Example: A brief scene in which Clooney, Pitt, and Damon (forgot about him, he’s big Mr. Bourne now so he gets the most face time with the big two—consider him 2a) are discussing strategy in an athletic store while they are trying on a bunch of ski jackets (Clooney’s fumbling of the zipper while attempting to dole out strategy is a subtle comedic gem), a small detail whose only purpose is as payoff for a joke several minutes later when the boys navigate the air-conditioning shaft of Pacino’s hotel in an effort to prove to Andy Garcia (the characters just keep coming!), who I’m guessing from the previews is the thirteenth Ocean (or was that _____’s Dad?, but then that would be fourteen? did they just sequel a sequel during a sequel?—head splitting), that Pacino’s valued five-star diamond collection is impossible to steal, a perfect way to induce a chuckle for those who were paying attention but wouldn’t stop the film dead if you missed the set-up, which is not only happening at this moment as you read this sentence, but happened a lot in 12. In short, if you made your way through that half of this piece and it made sense to you, then you probably won’t like the movie. If you just went with it, and can handle man-on-man beauty, then you might be ready for Ocean’s 13.