Ocean's Thirteen (2007)

Loyalty among friends can be a powerful motivator, especially when one of your own has been wronged. Steven Soderbergh's "Ocean's Thirteen" brings back George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and the rest of the gang - let's just assume there are 13 of them - for another round of the profitable caper franchise. This time, they're back in Las Vegas, plotting to sabotage the grand opening of a flashy new casino owned by Willy Bank (Al Pacino), a ruthless hotelier who swindled their old friend and mentor Reuben (Elliott Gould), leaving him bedridden after a heart attack. Look too closely at the plot and the whole thing collapses - giant tunnel-boring drills from the Chunnel, really? - but Soderbergh gives it a visual style that swings like Bobby Darin at the Copa. Beyond the movie-star wattage, the main reason to see it is Soderbergh's uncanny knack for letting the widescreen frame glide through the neon glow of Vegas or sort through groups of characters trading banter in hotel rooms. He shot the film himself, under his pseudonym Peter Andrews. It doesn't give enough time to goofballs Casey Affleck and Scott Caan, whose antics were a highlight of "Ocean's Twelve," but it provides plenty of comic material for a fun roster that includes Don Cheadle, Bernie Mac, Carl Reiner, Eddie Izzard, David Paymer and Bob Einstein, with Andy Garcia returning as rival casino boss Terry Benedict, now an uneasy ally. Ellen Barkin makes an alluring right-hand woman for Pacino, who, his hair dyed a suspicious shade of orange, happily chews the scenery throughout. The biggest mystery of the two sequels is why Clooney seems so content to step back from center stage. Still, his clipped, Hemingway-esque exchanges with Pitt are an amusing form of male shorthand.