Oceans 13 movie review

Last weekend we saw another Hollywood flick. There wasn’t much on offer by way of Hindi films. Cheeni Kum was out as Amitabh Bachchan is not exactly our favorite actor and some of the other films like Red Swastika (D grade murder mystery) or The Train (terrible reviews) were not what we wanted to see. We could have seen Dharm, and in fact we almost did, but then my husband husband vetoed the idea. He didn’t want to watch such a serious movie.

So Oceans 13 it was.

The movie has some real cool characters…er, thieves. Danny (George Clooney), Rusty (Brad Pitt) and Linus (Matt Damon) – who go all out to take revenge when their friend Reuben (Elliott Gould) is cheated in a real estate deal by Willie Banks (Al Pacino). Whew. What a line-up of stars! I guess they were more than half the attraction. I still missed Julia Roberts and Catherine Zeta Zones who were around in the earlier movies.

Somehow, Ellen Barkin’s role, (the only woman in the movie) of an ageing, sex-starved assistant of hotel owner Will Banks was rather over the top. She looked more hysterical than anything else during the scene in which she is seduced by Linus.

But otherwise, the film was entertaining…light entertainment though. Smooth, slick and well laid out. Everyone did their parts, but while Brad looked like a hunk, George Clooney looked tired. It was a little disappointing that none of the three main characters had any romantic entanglement…because romance always adds some spice to the story. It was a guys film I guess.

The plot was a trifle artificial…I mean the gang of 13 did everything so easily. All their plans work out so well that it seems like sleight of hand. The plot was also predictable, and one missed the suspense that had been generated in Oceans 11. The movie sizzles with action, excepts for spots of humour. The director, Steven Soderbergh, hasn’t made a terribly original flick…you could take a hundred Hollywood movies and find something from each of them in this movie.

The story is basically about how Danny Ocean and his gang try to bring a hotel baron (Al Pacino) down. They want to ruin the hotel’s reputation and also steal some diamonds…there are the usual casino scenes, helicopter scenes, rooftop scenes and elavator shaft scenes, as well as an almost bedroom scene. Al Pacino was too mechanical for my liking. He has the same style…whether hero or villain, and in this movie he didn’t make too much of an impact as a villain. I was hoping that Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia), the villain from the previous Ocean, would make the plot more interesting, but he had hardly any role. The gang simply approaches him for financing the big caper and thats it. BUT, whats the story really about…? Frankly, difficult to remember. Its one of those movies that you leave inside the theatre. It was two hours and two minutes long, and that was enough.

The theatre was only half full, and this was a Sunday. Certainly this movie is not going to be as big a draw as Pirates…

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