...slick, light, breezy affairs that are easy to take if they're not taken too seriously.
The movie starts with one of the old crew up to his regular mischief, robbing a bank by burrowing through a next-door building. But there is more important business at hand: Reuben (Gould) has had a heart attack. It seems that Reuben invested all of his considerable fortune in a Las Vegas casino, partnering with a big-shot billionaire snake named Willie Bank (Pacino). They intended to call the casino the Midas, with each man a joint owner, but Bank double-crossed him, leaving him with nothing. Bank even changed the name of the place to the Bank Casino, and it was enough to put poor Reuben into a coma.
One thing you know from watching these buddy movies is that you don't do dirty to one of the gang. These friends stick together, work together, and get even together. So Ocean and his pals set out to ruin Bank by bankrupting his new casino and stealing his most prized possession, a case full of diamonds awarded to him for opening some of the biggest, most-fabulous hotels on the planet.
And that's it. In the movie's favor, Clooney is as suave as ever. I'm guessing the guy was born in a tuxedo. Here's one of his best exchanges: Willie Bank threatens him, saying, "This town might have changed, but not me. I know people highly invested in my survival, and they are people who really know how to hurt in ways you can't even imagine." Danny casually responds, "Well, I know all the guys that you'd hire to come after me, and they like me better than you." The movie has several other good, humorous lines like this one, but if it had even more, it would have been funnier.
Matt Damon as the nerdy Linus Caldwell gets a juicy bit late in the picture, and Andy Garcia as Ocean's mark in the previous picture comes back to join the team. Remember, Garcia plays a rival casino owner who has as much to gain by Bank's downfall as anybody. However, the other returning stars don't get much space. Poor Brad Pitt hardly shows his face, and when he does, it's often in disguise, and Julia Roberts isn't even in it.
Making up for it are Pacino and Barkin. Pacino does the full Pacino, a wonderful villain of a character, his Bank all ego, pomp, arrogance, and bluster. Bank tells us he owns more of Nevada than anybody in history, and he won't let us forget it. For all we know, he owns the Corleone estate on Lake Tahoe. What's more, he tells us he never, ever, loses. Which makes him all the better to bring down. And Barkin, as his right-hand man, er, woman, Abagail Sponder, is ruthlessly cold and efficient; plus at fifty-three she's still dead sexy.
Nevertheless, in tightening up the plot to a single hit on a single mark, the movie rather diminishes everything else. Gone is most of the humorous interplay found in the previous films, replaced by loads of high-tech gadgetry, absurd split-second timing, and ludicrously precise coincidences. I mean, by the time Ocean and his crew are bringing in the tunnel-drilling equipment used to connect England and France under the English Channel, with nobody noticing, you begin to wonder if maybe the filmmakers haven't strayed just a little off course.
Consequently, "Ocean's Thirteen" is all about the scam, its new focus leaving very little room for twists or turns or character relationships. I missed the old silliness.
Film rating: 6/10
Video:
The HD picture quality varies in the three movies because director Soderbergh decided on different color palettes for each one. Warner Bros. present each movie in its original 2.40:1 aspect ratio, and each uses a VC-1 codec for the transfer. The first movie, "Ocean's Eleven," is the best-looking of the three. The image is very crisp most of the time, very clean, very clear, free from excessive grain or digital oddities, but a touch soft on occasion. There are still a few touches of the director's choice of curiously muted tones, murky night club interiors, and bizarre, flashy casino rooms to contend with, but it comes off pretty well, nonetheless. The colors fit the tone and mood of the story's settings, and the transfer does them justice.
The second movie, "Ocean's Twelve," continues in HD to veer wildly all over the map. Some of the images are clear and sharp, while others are vague and fuzzy; some of the color is bright and deep, while other hues are muted and glassy. Although black levels are strong, skin tones and scene colorations vary. Much of the time, faces are too dark and orangish, while grain comes and goes, and object detail, although well delineated in high-def, is lost in shadow. I'm sure Soderbergh intended all of this, but it becomes a little distracting anyhow.
The third movie, "Ocean's Thirteen," is the hardest to rate because Soderbergh seems to have gone more out of his way than ever to make it look as unnatural as possible. Or, conversely, the director went out of his way to make the movie look as much as possible like a garish 1960s' flick, with bright, oversaturated colors. When my reviewer friend Eddie Feng watched it in HD, he said it looked like the director "had photographed it through urine." Perhaps an exaggeration, but another reviewer friend, seeing the movie for the first time, told me he thought his television might have gone haywire. But no. The HD DVD transfer is probably as good as the engineers could make it and probably replicates the appearance of the original film print pretty well. Still, I found Soderbergh's look for this film more distracting than ever, even annoying. Nevertheless, this is undoubtedly a good transfer of what I found troublesome source material.
On the positive side, the HD transfer for "Thirteen" reproduces solid black levels and color depth. On the negative side, the opening shots are dark and grainy, with faces looking reddish orange; then a moment later we get a daylight shot, and things are just as odd, the darkness and grain remaining. The fact is, as I say, Soderbergh chose to use a gaudy color palette to remind us of the glitz and neon of Las Vegas, and he also appears to favor a high degree print grain. So that's what we get: Lots of dark, bright, oversaturated, neon-highlighted hues, mostly the reds, yellows, and oranges of the 60s, and more than little grain. Since this one's a Combo disc, on the standard-definition side the delineation is somewhat soft; on the HD DVD side, there is no question the 1080 resolution improves things. Although the HD subdues the grain somewhat, it has little effect lessening the flashy colors, which apparently is exactly what the director wanted. Overall, whether you're looking at the SD or HD version, the picture quality is not exactly what you would call realistic or true-to-life. Then again, neither is the movie, so I suppose that's the point.
Audio:
As far as the audio goes, the Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 on the three discs may not sound much different to the average listener than regular Dolby Digital 5.1. The DD+ improves midrange clarity, of course, which is where it counts in films that are almost pure dialogue, but it still doesn't do much with the rear channels because there isn't much surround there to begin with. From time to time, one notices the sound of a car pulling off into the distance, the ambient noise of a gambling hall, the reverberation of background music, or the occasional pyrotechnic effect. Well, the various explosions come off well.
Extras:
The three discs contain very similar bonus items. All of them come with ample scene selections (but no chapter inserts); theatrical trailers; English, French, Spanish, and Japanese spoken languages (except on "Ocean's Thirteen," which omits Japanese); English, French, Spanish, and Japanese subtitles (except on "Ocean's Thirteen," which includes English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, and Korean); and English captions for the hearing impaired. Their additional bonus items are in standard definition. Naturally, they also contain pop-up menus, bookmarks, a guide to elapsed time, a zoom-and-pan feature, and Elite Red HD cases.
The specific extras on "Ocean's Eleven" include, first, an audio commentary with stars Matt Damon, Andy Garcia, and Brad Pitt and, second, another audio commentary with director Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter Ted Griffin. Third, there's a fifteen-minute, documentary from HBO called "The Making of Ocean's Eleven," which is self-explanatory, and, fourth, there's a ten-minute documentary called "The Look of the Con," which explores the movie's costumes and makeup. Lastly, there are two brief teaser trailers and one longer widescreen trailer.
There were hardly any bonus materials on WB's standard-definition version of "Ocean's Twelve," but here on HD DVD we get a few more things. First up is an audio commentary by director Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter George Nolfi. Second, we have eighteen additional scenes in anamorphic widescreen totalling over twenty-eight minutes. Third, there's a thirteen-minute, making-of featurette, "HBO First Look: Twelve Is the New Eleven." And, finally, there's a widescreen, non-anamorphic theatrical trailer.
"Ocean's Thirteen" is an HD DVD and DVD Combo disc, and there are two bonuses exclusive to the high-definition side. The first is an audio commentary by director Steven Soderbergh and screenwriters Brian Koppelman and David Levien. Their give-and-take is reminiscent of the "Ocean's" movies themselves--casual, witty, self-deprecating, amusing, and entertaining. Incidentally, as I mentioned in the beginning, Soderbergh says that this movie is it; he always meant the "Ocean's" films as a trilogy, beginning and ending in Las Vegas, and he won't do another one. Fair enough. The second exclusive is a forty-four-minute documentary, "Masters of the Heist: Recalling Real-Life Sophisticated Heists." It chronicles four real-life thefts, with Penn and Teller among others explaining who did them and how they did them.
In addition, there are several other items you will find on both sides of the "Ocean's Thirteen" disc. The first is a twenty-two-minute featurette, "Vegas: An Opulent Illusion," which purports to be a history and overview of the city and its unique attractions but comes off more like a promotional from the Las Vegas Tourist Bureau. The second extra is a two-and-a-half-minute featurette, "Jerry Weintraub Walk and Talk," in which the movie's producer takes us on a brief tour of the movie's sets. The third major extra is a series of five additional (deleted or extended) scenes, lasting about four-and-a-half minutes.
Parting Thoughts:
The "Ocean's" movies are slick, light, breezy affairs that are easy to take if they're not taken too seriously. Clooney pretty much carries all three movies, and he proves he's the closest thing we've got right now to a Clark Gable or Cary Grant. All in all, these shows may only be middling caper flicks, but they're a step beyond what passes for entertainment in most other movies these days. In high-def, they're better than ever.
One thing you know from watching these buddy movies is that you don't do dirty to one of the gang. These friends stick together, work together, and get even together. So Ocean and his pals set out to ruin Bank by bankrupting his new casino and stealing his most prized possession, a case full of diamonds awarded to him for opening some of the biggest, most-fabulous hotels on the planet.
And that's it. In the movie's favor, Clooney is as suave as ever. I'm guessing the guy was born in a tuxedo. Here's one of his best exchanges: Willie Bank threatens him, saying, "This town might have changed, but not me. I know people highly invested in my survival, and they are people who really know how to hurt in ways you can't even imagine." Danny casually responds, "Well, I know all the guys that you'd hire to come after me, and they like me better than you." The movie has several other good, humorous lines like this one, but if it had even more, it would have been funnier.
Matt Damon as the nerdy Linus Caldwell gets a juicy bit late in the picture, and Andy Garcia as Ocean's mark in the previous picture comes back to join the team. Remember, Garcia plays a rival casino owner who has as much to gain by Bank's downfall as anybody. However, the other returning stars don't get much space. Poor Brad Pitt hardly shows his face, and when he does, it's often in disguise, and Julia Roberts isn't even in it.
Making up for it are Pacino and Barkin. Pacino does the full Pacino, a wonderful villain of a character, his Bank all ego, pomp, arrogance, and bluster. Bank tells us he owns more of Nevada than anybody in history, and he won't let us forget it. For all we know, he owns the Corleone estate on Lake Tahoe. What's more, he tells us he never, ever, loses. Which makes him all the better to bring down. And Barkin, as his right-hand man, er, woman, Abagail Sponder, is ruthlessly cold and efficient; plus at fifty-three she's still dead sexy.
Nevertheless, in tightening up the plot to a single hit on a single mark, the movie rather diminishes everything else. Gone is most of the humorous interplay found in the previous films, replaced by loads of high-tech gadgetry, absurd split-second timing, and ludicrously precise coincidences. I mean, by the time Ocean and his crew are bringing in the tunnel-drilling equipment used to connect England and France under the English Channel, with nobody noticing, you begin to wonder if maybe the filmmakers haven't strayed just a little off course.
Consequently, "Ocean's Thirteen" is all about the scam, its new focus leaving very little room for twists or turns or character relationships. I missed the old silliness.
Film rating: 6/10
Video:
The HD picture quality varies in the three movies because director Soderbergh decided on different color palettes for each one. Warner Bros. present each movie in its original 2.40:1 aspect ratio, and each uses a VC-1 codec for the transfer. The first movie, "Ocean's Eleven," is the best-looking of the three. The image is very crisp most of the time, very clean, very clear, free from excessive grain or digital oddities, but a touch soft on occasion. There are still a few touches of the director's choice of curiously muted tones, murky night club interiors, and bizarre, flashy casino rooms to contend with, but it comes off pretty well, nonetheless. The colors fit the tone and mood of the story's settings, and the transfer does them justice.
The second movie, "Ocean's Twelve," continues in HD to veer wildly all over the map. Some of the images are clear and sharp, while others are vague and fuzzy; some of the color is bright and deep, while other hues are muted and glassy. Although black levels are strong, skin tones and scene colorations vary. Much of the time, faces are too dark and orangish, while grain comes and goes, and object detail, although well delineated in high-def, is lost in shadow. I'm sure Soderbergh intended all of this, but it becomes a little distracting anyhow.
The third movie, "Ocean's Thirteen," is the hardest to rate because Soderbergh seems to have gone more out of his way than ever to make it look as unnatural as possible. Or, conversely, the director went out of his way to make the movie look as much as possible like a garish 1960s' flick, with bright, oversaturated colors. When my reviewer friend Eddie Feng watched it in HD, he said it looked like the director "had photographed it through urine." Perhaps an exaggeration, but another reviewer friend, seeing the movie for the first time, told me he thought his television might have gone haywire. But no. The HD DVD transfer is probably as good as the engineers could make it and probably replicates the appearance of the original film print pretty well. Still, I found Soderbergh's look for this film more distracting than ever, even annoying. Nevertheless, this is undoubtedly a good transfer of what I found troublesome source material.
On the positive side, the HD transfer for "Thirteen" reproduces solid black levels and color depth. On the negative side, the opening shots are dark and grainy, with faces looking reddish orange; then a moment later we get a daylight shot, and things are just as odd, the darkness and grain remaining. The fact is, as I say, Soderbergh chose to use a gaudy color palette to remind us of the glitz and neon of Las Vegas, and he also appears to favor a high degree print grain. So that's what we get: Lots of dark, bright, oversaturated, neon-highlighted hues, mostly the reds, yellows, and oranges of the 60s, and more than little grain. Since this one's a Combo disc, on the standard-definition side the delineation is somewhat soft; on the HD DVD side, there is no question the 1080 resolution improves things. Although the HD subdues the grain somewhat, it has little effect lessening the flashy colors, which apparently is exactly what the director wanted. Overall, whether you're looking at the SD or HD version, the picture quality is not exactly what you would call realistic or true-to-life. Then again, neither is the movie, so I suppose that's the point.
Audio:
As far as the audio goes, the Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 on the three discs may not sound much different to the average listener than regular Dolby Digital 5.1. The DD+ improves midrange clarity, of course, which is where it counts in films that are almost pure dialogue, but it still doesn't do much with the rear channels because there isn't much surround there to begin with. From time to time, one notices the sound of a car pulling off into the distance, the ambient noise of a gambling hall, the reverberation of background music, or the occasional pyrotechnic effect. Well, the various explosions come off well.
Extras:
The three discs contain very similar bonus items. All of them come with ample scene selections (but no chapter inserts); theatrical trailers; English, French, Spanish, and Japanese spoken languages (except on "Ocean's Thirteen," which omits Japanese); English, French, Spanish, and Japanese subtitles (except on "Ocean's Thirteen," which includes English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, and Korean); and English captions for the hearing impaired. Their additional bonus items are in standard definition. Naturally, they also contain pop-up menus, bookmarks, a guide to elapsed time, a zoom-and-pan feature, and Elite Red HD cases.
The specific extras on "Ocean's Eleven" include, first, an audio commentary with stars Matt Damon, Andy Garcia, and Brad Pitt and, second, another audio commentary with director Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter Ted Griffin. Third, there's a fifteen-minute, documentary from HBO called "The Making of Ocean's Eleven," which is self-explanatory, and, fourth, there's a ten-minute documentary called "The Look of the Con," which explores the movie's costumes and makeup. Lastly, there are two brief teaser trailers and one longer widescreen trailer.
There were hardly any bonus materials on WB's standard-definition version of "Ocean's Twelve," but here on HD DVD we get a few more things. First up is an audio commentary by director Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter George Nolfi. Second, we have eighteen additional scenes in anamorphic widescreen totalling over twenty-eight minutes. Third, there's a thirteen-minute, making-of featurette, "HBO First Look: Twelve Is the New Eleven." And, finally, there's a widescreen, non-anamorphic theatrical trailer.
"Ocean's Thirteen" is an HD DVD and DVD Combo disc, and there are two bonuses exclusive to the high-definition side. The first is an audio commentary by director Steven Soderbergh and screenwriters Brian Koppelman and David Levien. Their give-and-take is reminiscent of the "Ocean's" movies themselves--casual, witty, self-deprecating, amusing, and entertaining. Incidentally, as I mentioned in the beginning, Soderbergh says that this movie is it; he always meant the "Ocean's" films as a trilogy, beginning and ending in Las Vegas, and he won't do another one. Fair enough. The second exclusive is a forty-four-minute documentary, "Masters of the Heist: Recalling Real-Life Sophisticated Heists." It chronicles four real-life thefts, with Penn and Teller among others explaining who did them and how they did them.
In addition, there are several other items you will find on both sides of the "Ocean's Thirteen" disc. The first is a twenty-two-minute featurette, "Vegas: An Opulent Illusion," which purports to be a history and overview of the city and its unique attractions but comes off more like a promotional from the Las Vegas Tourist Bureau. The second extra is a two-and-a-half-minute featurette, "Jerry Weintraub Walk and Talk," in which the movie's producer takes us on a brief tour of the movie's sets. The third major extra is a series of five additional (deleted or extended) scenes, lasting about four-and-a-half minutes.
Parting Thoughts:
The "Ocean's" movies are slick, light, breezy affairs that are easy to take if they're not taken too seriously. Clooney pretty much carries all three movies, and he proves he's the closest thing we've got right now to a Clark Gable or Cary Grant. All in all, these shows may only be middling caper flicks, but they're a step beyond what passes for entertainment in most other movies these days. In high-def, they're better than ever.
Average user rating (1-5):
[release]22261[/release]