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Ocean's Thirteen
Reviewed by Theo Michelfeld
Posted: June 9, 2007              

Tell you what, folks. I enjoy a bit of slick, soulless cinema. I mean, don’t get me wrong; emotional traction is terrific. Heck, I love the stuff. But if the colors are warm, and the tunes are groovy, I can happily dig a flick that takes zero interest in my heartstrings. In other words, I like Steven Soderbergh movies.

True, this Hollywood hepcat did make a pair of meaningful films back in 2000, when he won the directing Oscar for Traffic, and lost for Erin Brokovich. But mostly he makes defiantly shallow movies, exercises in craft against which the heart can find no purchase. Awesome. And his commitment to the superficial is never more apparent than when he cranks out another Ocean’s flick.

The new installment is called Ocean’s Thirteen. Like its predecessors, it features George Clooney and Brad Pitt being so cool you can only take the opportunity to gratefully realize you’re a hopeless dweeb. That’s if you’re a dude. Maybe women experience the picture differently, I don’t know.

Again, it’s the story of a con that is probably so costly to execute it cannot possibly yield a profit. The various players somehow orchestrate their elaborate scheme with pinpoint timing, all the while improvising on an insufferably whimsical level. We the audience are only half-privy to the complexity of the shenanigans, and so we too get conned, out of all we have invested in the proceedings, which is absolutely nothing. And the whole thing is narrated like a cinematic shell game, filmed with exquisite lighting and composition, and, somehow, three movies in, scored with that unremitting queue of highly pleasurable upscale funk tunes.

Supporting roles are occupied by Matt Damon, Don Cheadle, Carl Reiner, and numerous other charmers, all of whom deftly avoid performing any feats of acting. The setting is a spectacularly gaudy Vegas casino, and the target is a villainous tycoon played by Al Pacino, so badly in need of a non-violent, financially devastating comeuppance that the heroes will casually surmount each new obstacle, even as they all agree, with equal nonchalance, that it cannot be done.  

To work up a distaste for this experience would require muscles I don’t use, or even believe exist. Ocean’s Thirteen is intoxicating but harmless. It’s showy, but un-pretentious. It’s an invitation to smile, without imposing the indignity of laughter. And it’s entirely self-contented, with or without an approving audience. Who wants to swim against that tide?

Films of consequence will not abandon us forever if we take two hours, once in a while, to embrace a cinematic “himbo” like Ocean’s Thirteen. Come October, the profundity and the moribundity will surely hit the multiplexes hard, and by December we may once again come to realize that emotional gravity can be its own pretension. Meanwhile, folks, it’s only June, and quality films sometimes come with no strings attached. Hey, if you can’t be with the film you love, love the film you’re with. 

Copyright © 2007 Theo Michelfeld