Law Religion Culture Review

Exploring the intersections of law, religion and culture. Copyright by Richard J. Radcliffe. All rights reserved.

Friday, June 22, 2007

Movie Review: Ocean's Thirteen.

If slickness were a virtue, Ocean's Thirteen should be nominated for sainthood.

The clothes were slick; the dialogue was slick; the music was slick; the cinematography was slick; the setting was slick; the acting was slick; the story was slick; and the direction was slick.

Get the picture? It was slick.

But was there any substance to go along with that style? There was, but it lurked underneath all this slick veneer.

Basically, this is a revenge film. Most would not characterize revenge as virtuous. The motive was perhaps virtuous, however. A group of friends, the balance of Ocean's Thirteen, exhibited extreme loyalty to their friend (Eliott Gould's character, Reuben Tishkoff), who was cheated by Al Pacino's character, Willie Bank (slick name huh?). They set out to make it right.

At considerable cost and effort, they put together an elaborate scheme to extricate bank from Willie Bank. It was so intricate, and involved so many moving parts, that its execution was quite unbelievable. Nevertheless, it was a slick plan.

On par with Ocean's Eleven, and vastly superior to Ocean's Twelve, this movie will entertain those who liked either of the previous iterations.

Rated PG-13, this movie was surprisingly clean, and hardly earned even a -13 designation. Of course, it would be difficult to market a movie with 13 in the title without a -13 in the rating.

Ocean's Thirteen receives a B+.

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