Movie Review - Oceans 13

Friday night, some friends and I caught the latest installment of the adventures of Danny Ocean and the gang.  If you saw it, you may not have thought much about Oceans 12 and you may be concerned about the quality of 13.  Well, Steven Soderbergh wanted to subtitle 13 "the movie that we should have made."  And I'm happy to report that this film is much truer and almost as good as the first movie.

There are some spoilers here so proceed with caution...  Danny and the gang are back in Vegas.  Reuben got shafted on a casino deal with a wealthy developer, and the boys get together to get back what's rightfully his.  Danny tries to tactfully ask the developer (well-played by Al Pacino) for Reuben's money but is rebuffed.  So the boys decide to hit his new casino.  Hard.  All the players are back from the prior films, with the exception of Julia Roberts and Catherine Zeta-Jones.  Ellen Barkin fills in for them here, but she was probably the weakest role of the bunch.  Her character could've been removed and the storyline would have hardly been affected.  On the plus side, she allows Linus (Matt Damon) to get a little more screen-time and be more directly involved in the heist.  Plus there's an appearance by a man I only knew as Super Dave Osbourne (real name: Bob Einstein).  I knew it was him because he's still got that gravelly voice.

The movie flowed well and while there were a bunch of little sub-plots, I thought they all fit in pretty well and made for a good end product.  I'm going to give Oceans 13 a "9."  I'd see it again.