`Ocean's' sequel plays same hand

The third roll of the dice for George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and their merry band of casino crooks is an almost certain winner for its makers, a break-even deal at best for audiences.

Glittery as a Vegas Strip stage revue, smooth and smarmy as a high-roller on the lucky streak of his life, "Ocean's Thirteen" wins back some of the "Ocean's Eleven" charm the franchise lost amid the sputtering sequel "Ocean's Twelve."

Yet "Ocean's Thirteen" still feels like one trip too many to the craps table, playing the same hunches, with the outcome unimaginatively clear from the start: Categorical victory for the rascally good guys planning a Robin Hood-style heist, utter defeat and humiliation for the villain ( Al Pacino).

Oh, and also obvious from the get-go: a big summer hit for distributor Warner Bros., which pretty much had a sure bet just by rounding up its superstar cast (minus Julia Roberts) and director Steven Soderbergh one more time.

With jazzy, funky music reminiscent of movie scores of the 1960s, the era that spawned Frank Sinatra's original "Ocean's Eleven," the new movie dashes through a prologue meant to establish a fresh bond with our mercenary gang and the honor-among-thieves motive for their latest caper.

Vegas mogul Reuben Tishkoff ( Elliott Gould), the money man of the Ocean's Eleven crew, is bilked out of his half-interest in a swanky new casino and hotel being opened by cutthroat Willy Bank (Pacino), who egotistically names his joint The Bank.

Stressed into a heart attack, Reuben lies listless, waiting to die, prompting Danny Ocean (Clooney) and Rusty Ryan (Pitt) to call out the troops for a revenge job that will break The Bank and its owner on opening night.

The absence of Roberts, who costarred in the first two flicks, is dismissed with an offhand remark by Danny, while "Ocean's Twelve" co-star Catherine Zeta-Jones also is a no-show.

Everyone else is back: Damon, Don Cheadle, Bernie Mac, Carl Reiner, Casey Affleck, Scott Caan, Eddie Jemison and Shaobo Qin. Also returning is Andy Garcia as the gang's old adversary Terry Benedict, who forges an uneasy alliance with Danny and the boys to help nail casino rival Bank.

Ellen Barkin joins the cast as Bank's top aide, Abigail Spooner, a character played for comic effect, a woman who seems too giddy and insecure to serve as lieutenant to a ruthless titan.

Eddie Izzard comes on board as a new Ocean's ally, an engineering genius whose little duel with an old school mate (Julian Sands as designer of The Bank's invulnerable security system) is one of several subplots that muddy the works without raising the dramatic stakes of "Ocean's Thirteen."

Another of those meandering subplots is Affleck and Caan's labor battle on behalf of workers at a Mexican plastics factory that makes casino dice. Another is Cheadle's brief impersonation of an Evel Knievel-type motorcycle stunt driver. Another is David Paymer's presence as a hotel reviewer hurled into the assignment from hell by Danny's machinations.

"Ocean's Thirteen" tries to give all of its players, old and new, something meaningful to do. But like "Shrek the Third" with its ever-expanding cast, too many cutthroats in the casino wind up watering down whatever's stewing in the pot.

The movie is at its best when it lets superstars Clooney and Pitt do their thing, mugging and wisecracking with style and the uber-confidence that comes with knowing you're Hollywood kingpins in a game where you and yours always have the better hand.

Damon gets a bit of a promotion with a side-story involving his character's con-man father and another in which he dons a fake nose and artificial pheromones to romance Barkin.

Pacino thankfully tones down his booming, bellowing bad-guy act, with Bank coming off as a clear megalomaniac, but at least a tolerable one.

Soderbergh remains a director alternating between noble creative forays and crass commercial successes. After the failure of last fall's film-noir throwback "The Good German," also starring his frequent collaborator Clooney, Soderbergh has a near-certain smash in "Ocean's Thirteen" that will help carry him through whatever strange, idiosyncratic experiments are next on his to-do list.

As much as Clooney and Pitt, the fictional casino itself is a key star, with sparkling interiors created on a Hollywood sound stage and dazzling computer-crafted images of the high-rise joint slicing into the Vegas skyline. A series of three wafer-thin, twisting towers dozens of stories high, The Bank seems an architectural impossibility, but it sure looks cool.

Clooney's Danny, Pitt's Rusty and some of their cohorts bemoan how Vegas has changed, pioneer casinos such as the Dunes and the Desert Inn supplanted by bigger, flashier entertainment and gambling behemoths.

The same holds for "Ocean's Thirteen." Bigger and flashier than "Ocean's Eleven," yes. Worth betting on for movie-goers? Even-odds, maybe.

At least all you'll lose is the price of a ticket and a couple of hours time, though.