Ocean's Thirteen (also written as Ocean's 13) is a 2007 American heist comedy film directed by Steven Soderbergh. It is the third installment in the Ocean's franchise, and the sequel to Ocean's Twelve (2004). The entire male cast reprised their roles from the previous installments, with Al Pacino and Ellen Barkin joining the cast, but Julia Roberts and Catherine Zeta-Jones did not return.
Ocean's Thirteen | |
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Directed by | Steven Soderbergh |
Screenplay by | |
Based on | Characters by
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Produced by | Jerry Weintraub |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Peter Andrews |
Edited by | Stephen Mirrione |
Music by | David Holmes |
Production companies |
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Distributed by | Warner Bros. Pictures |
Release dates |
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Running time | 122 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $85 million[1] |
Box office | $311.7 million[1] |
Filming began in July 2006 in Las Vegas and Los Angeles, based on a script by Brian Koppelman and David Levien.[2] The film was screened as an Out of Competition presentation at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival,[3] and was released on June 8, 2007 in the United States.[4] The film was well-received and grossed $311 million worldwide.
Reuben Tishkoff builds a hotel-casino on the Las Vegas Strip; against advice from his friend and erstwhile criminal partner, Danny Ocean, he involves himself with investor and casino mogul Willy Bank, whose thugs strongarm Reuben into signing over his ownership stake. Tishkoff suffers a heart attack and becomes bedridden. Ocean offers Bank a chance to set things right, given his long history in Las Vegas and the fact that he "shook Sinatra's hand", but Bank refuses and completes construction of the hotel, renamed "The Bank". To avenge Tishkoff, Ocean gathers his crew and plans to ruin Bank on the opening night of the hotel.
The crew develops a plan with two objectives:
To disrupt the Greco, they plan to use a magnetron disguised as a cell phone as a gift to Bank. They also obtain the drilling machine used to bore the Channel Tunnel to simulate an earthquake under the casino, ensuring that Bank will evacuate the premises. Their plan on opening night is to have Bank inadvertently disrupt the Greco by using his new phone, initiate their rigged machines as well as dealers on their payroll, and then simulate the earthquake to force the evacuation, and have players leave with their winnings.
Shortly before opening night, the drill breaks down. The team is forced to ask Terry Benedict, their previous target, for funds to buy a replacement. Benedict offers the funds for a portion of his share of the take since he dislikes Bank, and demands that Ocean steal Bank's private diamond collection in celebration of his Five Diamond Awards. The jewels are secured in a case at the top of the casino. Ocean has Linus Caldwell get romantically close to Bank's assistant, Abigail Sponder, to gain access to the case. Secretly, Benedict contracts master thief François "The Night Fox" Toulour to intercept the diamonds.
Ocean institutes the final part of the plan by having FBI agents on his payroll arrive at the hotel and arrest Livingston Dell on suspicion of rigging the card-shuffling machines, allowing them to be replaced with actual rigged ones. Another FBI agent arrests Linus for switching the diamonds with fakes. The agent takes Linus away and he turns out to be Linus' father Robert, whom Ocean enlisted. They try to evacuate from the roof but are intercepted by Toulour, who takes the diamonds and parachutes off the roof after tricking Linus with an unloaded pistol. However, Ocean anticipated this and never had Linus make the switch. Linus and his father escape in a helicopter piloted by Basher, tearing the case of diamonds from the roof.
The earthquake is triggered and the players evacuate with millions of dollars in winnings. Ocean tells Bank he is the mastermind behind everything and that they did it for Reuben. Ocean also reminds Bank that he cannot get revenge, since Danny knows all of Bank's associates and they prefer him over Bank. Also, Bank cannot go to the police due to Bank's illegal activities. With their share of the winnings, Ocean's crew buy property on the Strip for Reuben to build his own casino. Ocean donates Benedict's $72 million portion of the take to charity in Benedict's name, forcing him to admit his philanthropy on broadcast television.
As Ocean, Rusty, and Linus depart from the airport, Rusty rigs one of the slot machines to allow the real Diamond reviewer to win $11 million as compensation for how they treated him.
In January 2006, it was reported that producers were in discussions about setting and shooting most of the film at the Wynn Las Vegas. Clooney had previously hoped to film it at his then-upcoming Las Ramblas Resort in Las Vegas, although the project would not have been ready in time for production.[5] In March 2006, it was reported that the film would be shot in a fake casino that would be constructed on five Warner Bros. sound stages.[6] Filming was expected to begin in Las Vegas and Los Angeles in July 2006.[2] Al Pacino joined the cast in April 2006.[7]
Location scouting took place in Las Vegas in mid-July 2006, with the Bellagio confirmed as a filming location, which was also used for scenes in Ocean's Eleven.[8] Filming in Las Vegas began on August 7, 2006,[9] with scenes shot at McCarran International Airport and at a heliport.[10] The following day, filming moved to the Palazzo resort, which was under construction at the time.[11] Filming in Las Vegas concluded on August 9, 2006, after scenes involving Clooney, Pitt, Damon, and García were shot in an office at the back of the Bellagio. At that time, Clooney and producer Jerry Weintraub were considering premiering the film in Las Vegas.[11] Another Las Vegas shoot was scheduled for September 2006,[12] including additional filming at the Bellagio.[11]
Julia Roberts and Catherine Zeta-Jones did not appear in their respective roles as Tess Ocean and Isabel Lahiri, due to the actresses not wanting to participate in the movie without a significant part in the plot, which the script would not accommodate. This is referenced early in the movie when Ocean mentions it's 'not their fight' when questioned as to their absence by others in the group.[13] Topher Grace, who cameoed in the previous two films as a heavily fictionalized version of himself, was unable to return due to reshoots on Spider-Man 3: he recalls that his planned cameo would have involved him having a conversation with Rusty while holding an Asian baby and never addressing where the baby came from.[14]
The film did well on its first weekend, reaching the top spot at the North American box office. Despite opening in 250 more theaters than Ocean's Twelve, it had a slightly weaker opening weekend, than the former, pulling in $36 million, compared with Twelve's $39 million.[15][16] By the end of December 2007, Ocean's Thirteen had generated $117.2 million in box office domestically, and $311.4 million worldwide.[17]
On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 70% based on 200 reviews, and an average rating of 6.4/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Ocean's Thirteen reverts to the formula of the first installment, and the result is another slick and entertaining heist film."[18] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 62 out of 100, based on 37 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[19] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.[20]
In his review for New York, David Edelstein wrote, "As the plotting gets knottier, [Soderbergh]'s technique gets more fluid—the editing jazzier, the colors more luscious, the whip-pans more whizbang. It's all anchored by Clooney, looking impudent, roguish, almost laughably handsome."[21] Manohla Dargis, in her review for The New York Times, wrote, "Playing inside the box and out, [Soderbergh] has learned to go against the grain while also going with the flow. In Ocean's Thirteen he proves that in spades by using color like Kandinsky and hanging a funny mustache on Mr. Clooney's luscious mug, having become a genius of the system he so often resists."[22]
In his review for the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert gave the film two and a half stars out of four, writing "Ocean's Thirteen proceeds with insouciant dialogue, studied casualness, and a lotta stuff happening, none of which I cared much about because the movie doesn't pause to develop the characters, who are forced to make do with their movie-star personas."[23] Peter Bradshaw, in his review for The Guardian, wrote, "Sometimes we go to split-screen, and sometimes — whooaaa! — two of the split-screen frames are funkily showing the same thing. It is all quite meaningless. As if in an experimental novel by B. S. Johnson, the scenes could be reshuffled and shown in any order and it would amount to the same thing. There is no human motivation and no romance."[24]
Ocean's Thirteen was released on DVD and Blu-ray in November 2007.[25]
A sequel to Ocean's Thirteen had been discussed as a possibility, up until the death of Bernie Mac. However, in June 2021, Don Cheadle revealed that Steven Soderbergh had been working on the concept of a sequel film. In July of the same year, Matt Damon also expressed interest in returning to the franchise, while stating that the project is up to Soderbergh.[26][27]
Ocean's 8, a spin-off of the Ocean's Trilogy films, was directed by Gary Ross and released in 2018. Sandra Bullock starred as Debbie Ocean, Danny Ocean's sister, opposite Cate Blanchett, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway, Rihanna Fenty, Sarah Paulson, Mindy Kaling, and Nora "Awkwafina" Lum, as a team who took part in a heist at the Met Gala.
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