Ocean’s Thirteen
Running Time 122 minutes
Written by Brian Koppelman and David Levien
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Starring George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon

Ocean’s Thirteen, the third and, if there is a God, last installment of the George Clooney–Steven Soderbergh crime-caper franchise, is flat, abstruse, predictable and unable to raise your pulse rate higher than a blip on an EKG. But it has an importance for me few other movies have these days. Let me explain. While the larky Ocean’s Eleven and the forgettable Ocean’s Twelve aimed no higher than stroking egos and jingling a few box-office coins, it’s this latest tired but titillating chapter in the trio of male-bonding seminars that shows them for what they really are: throwbacks to the Golden Age of Hollywood. They eulogize the days of Gable, Gardner and Garland, not to mention Bogie, Cary and two Hepburns, and lament the rise of supermarket tabloids, cable blabbermouths and other sources of B-list celebrity garbage that inundate us today and clog the checkout lines with gum-chewing gridlock.

The mere idea of Ocean’s Thirteen and its hunky stars with fresh shaves, short hair and manicures conjures up images of a finer, more civilized age at the movies. Watching the cast pal around Las Vegas effectively reminds me of Sinatra’s Rat Pack holding court at the Sands. Thinking about Mr. Clooney and his overly testosterone-endowed gang hanging out at his villa on Lake Como is the closest thing we’ve got to Truman Capote, John Huston and Humphrey Bogart swapping whiskey and tall tales on the Mediterranean coast during the filming of Beat the Devil, another “make it up on the spot and become a legend” turkey with attitude about a rogue’s gallery of international scoundrels. There was a time when movie stars were movie stars and nothing less, even before their morning coffee, and we were all better off for it. So Ocean’s Thirteen has a plethora of camera-ready Coke-bottle abs. What, you also want a plot that makes sense? It’s probably enough to scan the wax-chested scenery and not worry about content. There’s so much going on, so many multiple story lines, such an avalanche of tertiary characters from the first two movies whose presence is never explained, that any attempt to analyze is an errand for fools. By the end, the alleged story line becomes so ridiculous you won’t remember it anyway. They should have called the movie Ocean’s Three, since Clooney, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon are the only ones in it with anything to do. Al Pacino, Andy Garcia, Don Cheadle, Bernie Mac, Casey Affleck, Scott Caan, Carl Reiner, Elliot Gould and the rest of the humongous cast just hang out at the catering truck, phone in reactions for Mr. Soderbergh’s camera, collect their paychecks, and move on. Ellen Barkin drops by, too, in a role that would once have been played by Lizabeth Scott or Gloria Grahame, but you hardly know she’s around. Girls are important, but this is not a movie about girls. It’s a movie about per diems.

The main problem, though, is the absence of any certifiable suspense. Ocean & Co. spend 90 minutes of plodding exposition telling us what they’re going to do—and then they do it. The last time I felt this kind of tension was waiting to see if the dry cleaners could get a Cabernet stain out of a pair of white pants. In most heist films, you know the clever protagonist will ultimately break the bank, steal the jewels or crack the encrypted database, then sail off to Turks and Caicos with the loot—and the girl. The good ones give you a dollop of suspense as to how it might actually happen. Here, Ocean and his wisecracking cronies encounter no roller-coaster twists, wrestle with no meaningful internal conflicts, and for every challenge, a handy deus ex machina waits in the wings to fix it—literally, in the case of a 50-ton subterranean earthmover laughably hauled in to pull off a surgical earthquake tremor. If you want a real Ocean’s Thirteen moment while saving the price of a ticket, just invite Messrs. Clooney, Pitt, Damon, et al. over to stage a dramatic reading of your new ink-jet-printer installation guide, then watch them install the damn thing. It’ll achieve more or less the same effect.

But in a movie like this, the plot, the characters and the deep moral message matter far less than the spectacle, and what a load of eye candy it is: millionaire celebrity playboys disrupting real Vegas casinos in a leisure world of money, hand-tailored couture and a dish like Ellen Barkin. The whole movie is a fantasy of a Playboy fantasy from the days when Playboy meant something. Every woman is a walking ad for Versace and Bulgari. Every man is the high roller all men imagine themselves to be. As a director (and, under a pseudonym, acting as his own cinematographer), Mr. Soderbergh uses the lights of the Vegas Strip as a Technicolor palette with marvelous effect. There’s a reason that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Because if you saw it in the harsh glare of ordinary daylight, you might run for the shelter outside the city limits. But here, every scene is bathed in cool blues and hot reds and dirty golds, the color of Paris Hilton’s hair. Ocean’s 13 is easy on the eyes, and it goes down as smooth as a single-malt scotch.

There’s one scene before the spectacular non-climax where the Clooney-Pitt duo stroll casually by the soaring, gilded fountains of the Bellagio. They stop. They pose. Their profiles lament the demise of the Vegas they once knew: old casinos long since torn down, gangsters who gave the strip an aura of danger, celebrity showmen who carried themselves with class and ruled like giants. And that nostalgia, in the end, is what makes the film worthwhile. Ocean’s Thirteen will rake in the chips, paving the way for Ocean’s 14, 15, 28 and 37. Mr. Clooney says no, but it’s not the worst idea. Not half as horrifying as making a movie about Ann Coulter. Danny Ocean and his second-generation Rat Pack could use each chapter of the saga to initiate new members into the elite fraternity (and, occasionally, sorority) of genuine movie stardom. The intense Clive Owen or the dashing Hugh Jackman would make prime candidates. So when (if?) the next installment comes around, I’ll give it a shot. If movie stars no longer act like movie stars in real life, at least we’ve still got the movies.