Ocean's 13

I just saw Ocean's 13. The basic premise is that Danny Ocean and company want to get revenge on someone who did something bad to them. This someone (played by Al Pacino) is, naturally, a rich casino owner. Since this is a new movie, they can't re-use any stunts from the first two movies, so instead of a heist it's a scam they're trying to pull.

Minor Spoilers Follow

Overall the movie is pretty formulaic. There's the unbreakable security, which they break, using a combination of totally outlandish actions and magical technological ability. There's Danny's crew impersonating VIPs. There's the egomaniacal bad guy. Nothing is beyond infiltration; if they want to rig a craps game they infiltrate the dice factory, et cetera. What follows is a basic re-hash of the first movie, without the novelty or the excitement but with a slightly different story. The first movie was good because it seemed that what they were doing was impossible, yet they found a way to accomplish it. In this movie they do the same thing, but by the third time around it's just routine. They tell you the plan up front, then they do exactly what they told you they'd do. They turn supposed setbacks into victories by virtue of preexisting plans to deal specifically with those setbacks. There's nothing surprising anywhere in the movie, except perhaps the number of connections Ocean & Co. have: they know a guy at every company from the engineering firm that dug the Chunnel to the mobile phone division of Samsung. But even that seems mundane in this movie, as every character just plods along in his role. If you've never seen the first movie, you might enjoy this movie, but otherwise you won't find anything new and only a little entertainment.