***The Fixer Man Cometh- George Clooney’s Ocean’s 13

 

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Ocean’s 13, starring George Clooney, Brad Pitts, Al Pacino, Eliot Gould, 2007

Everybody likes to see a bad guy get his comeuppance. Nobody likes to see a guy screw his partner (not in the old days anyway maybe now things are different in the raw dog-eat-dog world). Everybody likes to see a bad guy from Vegas get his comeuppance in duplicate and that is the premise behind Danny Ocean’s action in this third of the modern Ocean series (the old Frank Sinatra-led pack in the 1960s or so being the “classic”). Danny (played by George Clooney) and Rusty (played by Brad Pitts) are once again called to right some Vegas wrongs in the film under review, Ocean’s 13.           

The plot line is simple-A friend, an old time casino owing friend and father figure for Danny and the boys (played by Eliot Gould) has been kicked the teeth by an up and coming Vegas hotel mogul (played by Al Pacino), and his partner, who wants to make Vegas a more upscale place where Mom and Pop might not feel so comfortable but where the international jet set might want to land for a few days. So out goes the old bargain basement casino-hotel and in comes the new. And that is the kick in the teeth that Danny and friends try to avenge. That bad act and old Eliot taking a heart attack over the notion that he was out of the business.

And avenge Danny and the guys (no women on this caper) do using all the high tech skills available to the motley crew of expert do-gooders. See, what they do is draw all the resources from the new hotel by hook or by crook, the money, naturally as the old master burglary Willie Sutton made us aware when asked about his thing for robbing banks. So between the individual hi-jinx necessary to pull the plot off and Danny’s thoughtful plan to gain revenge Brother Pacino has egg on his face, no question. Danny though juts keeps trucking on in the sultry Vegas night.