Ocean's Thirteen is a 2007 crime comedy film directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring an ensemble cast. It is the third and final film^[1] in the Soderbergh series following the 2004 sequel Ocean's Twelve and the 2001 film Ocean's Eleven, which itself was a remake of the 1960 Rat Pack film Ocean's 11. All of the cast members reprised their roles from the previous installments except for Julia Roberts and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Al Pacino and Ellen Barkin joined the cast as their new targets.

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 out of competition at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.^[3] It was released on June 8, 2007 in the United States^[4] and in several countries in the Middle East on June 6.^[5]

Plot[link]

Reuben Tishkoff (Elliott Gould), in an attempt to legitimize himself in his later years, is conned by his business partner and ruthless businessman Willy Bank (Al Pacino). When Bank forces Tishkoff to sign over the ownership rights of the new hotel/casino they were building together, Reuben suffers a heart attack and becomes bed-ridden. Danny Ocean (George Clooney), after attempting to negotiate with Bank, gathers up his partners-in-crime and plans to completely ruin Bank on the night of the opening of the casino, "The Bank", as a way to get revenge for Reuben.

They decide to do so in two ways. First, they plan to prevent Bank's new hotel from winning the prestigious Five Diamond Award from the Royal Review board, which Bank has won four times before for other casinos. Saul Bloom (Carl Reiner) poses as the reviewer of the board, while the real reviewer (David Paymer), who proclaims himself to be a "Very Unimportant Person", is treated horribly during his stay through Ocean's associates and the staff of the hotel on their payroll.

The second plan is to rig the casino's slot machines and other gambling games to force the hotel to pay out more than $500 million in winnings across the casino; this will force Bank to cede control of the hotel to his board. Rigging of the games would require them to defeat "The Greco", a state-of-the-art artificial intelligence system that monitors the games and ensures that all winnings are legitimate by measuring the players' responses for authenticity. They plan to trick Bank into carrying a cell phone with a magnetron, created by technical expert Roman Nagel (Eddie Izzard), to disrupt the Greco. To assure that players cash out, Ocean's team acquires one of the giant drills used to bore the Channel Tunnel to simulate an earthquake under the hotel on its gala opening night.

While the group prepares the rigged games, they run into problems when the drill fails. Ocean is forced to approach his nemesis Terry Benedict (Andy García) to fund the purchase of the second drill. While Benedict has a grudge against Bank and is willing to help, he only offers Ocean the funds if they also steal the four necklaces Bank has purchased to celebrate winning the Diamond Awards, now on display in a secured case at the top level of the hotel. Ocean plans for Linus Caldwell (Matt Damon) to seduce Bank's assistant, Abigail Sponder (Ellen Barkin), to gain access to the display and switch the diamonds with fake ones.

As Ocean's plan proceeds on opening night, agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation have been tipped off that machines have been rigged by Livingston Dell (Eddie Jemison)- although in reality this simply allows Livingston to have the card-dealing machines removed as he was unable to actually rig them-, and have identified Livingston, which may reveal the rest of Ocean's gang to Bank. Basher (Don Cheadle) distracts Bank long enough to allow the gang to change the FBI records of Dell's associates to random other criminals. Linus is arrested by the lead agent, but is surprised to discover he is his father, Bobby (Bob Einstein), who is in on Ocean's plan and there to help Linus swap the diamonds. As they exit to the roof of the hotel for extraction via helicopter, they are caught by François "The Night Fox" Toulour (Vincent Cassel), whom Benedict had ordered to intercept the diamonds. Linus hands over the diamonds to Toulour, who leaves, but discovers too late he only holds the fakes; Ocean had been aware of Toulour's presence, and arranged to extract the entire display case from the hotel with the helicopter.

The remainder of Ocean's plan continues as expected, with the Greco disrupted, and guests leaving the hotel with their bountiful winnings. As Bank realizes his ruin, Ocean lets him know that they did everything for Reuben, taunting him about the fact that Bank cannot even arrange for revenge as he cannot prove that Ocean did anything illegal and all of his criminal contacts like Ocean better than Bank. The group uses the money they made off with to buy property north of the Las Vegas Strip for Reuben to build his own casino. As punishment for Benedict's treachery, Ocean donates his portion of the take to charity, forcing Benedict to publicly admit his philanthropy. As the group disperses on their own and considers settling down, Rusty ensures that the "Very Unimportant Person" is compensated by allowing him to win an $11 million jackpot at a rigged slot machine at the airport.

Cast[link]

The Thirteen[link]

1. George Clooney as Danny Ocean
2. Brad Pitt as Rusty Ryan
3. Matt Damon as Linus Caldwell/Lenny Pepperidge
4. Bernie Mac as Frank Catton
5. Elliott Gould as Reuben Tishkoff
6. Casey Affleck as Virgil Malloy
7. Scott Caan as Turk Malloy
8. Eddie Jemison as Livingston Dell
9. Don Cheadle as Basher Tarr/Fender Roads
10. Shaobo Qin as "The Amazing" Yen/Mr. Weng
11. Carl Reiner as Saul Bloom/Kensington Chubb
12. Andy García as Terry Benedict
13. Eddie Izzard as Roman Nagel

Julia Roberts and Catherine Zeta-Jones did not appear in their roles as Tess Ocean and Isabel Lahiri due to script issues,^[6] their absence being explained by Danny, who repeatedly states "It's not their fight."

Others[link]

• Ellen Barkin as Abigail Sponder
• Al Pacino as Willy Bank
• Vincent Cassel as François Toulour
• Bob Einstein as FBI Agent Robert "Bobby" Caldwell
• Olga Sosnovska as Debbie
• David Paymer as The V.U.P. (The real Five Diamond Award reviewer.)
• Julian Sands as Greco Montgomery
• Angel Oquendo as Guard Ortega
• Jerry Weintraub as Denny Shields
• Scott L. Schwartz as "The Bruiser" (seen cashing a large number of casino chips)
• Oprah Winfrey as Herself
• Noureen DeWulf as Indian girl

Reception[link]

Box office[link]

The film did well on its first weekend, reaching the top spot at the North American box office. Despite being opened in 250 more theaters than Ocean's Twelve, it had a slightly weaker opening weekend than the former, pulling in $36 million, compared to Twelve's $39 million opening weekend.^[7][8] By the end of December 2007, Ocean's Thirteen had generated $311.4 million in box office revenue worldwide.^[9]

Critical reception[link]

Critical reception to the movie has been more positive than its predecessor with some critics liking the movie's style while others criticized it for being overly complex. Joel Siegel, in what would turn out to be his last review for Good Morning America, stated that if it had been the first movie, there still would have been a sequel. On the movie website Rotten Tomatoes, the movie has received an overall 70% score, and a top critics score of 58%.^[10] In his review for New York, David Edelstein wrote, "As the plotting gets knottier, his 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".^[11] Manohla Dargis, in her review for The New York Times, wrote, "Playing inside the box and out, he 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".^[12] However, Roger Ebert wrote, in his review for the Chicago Sun-Times, "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".^[13] 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 BS 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".^[14]

Home video release[link]

Ocean's Thirteen was released on DVD in November 2007.^[15]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Ocean's Thirteen

• Official website
• Ocean's Thirteen at the Internet Movie Database
• Ocean's Thirteen at Box Office Mojo
• Ocean's Thirteen at AllRovi

This article's lead section may not adequately summarize its contents. Please consider expanding the lead to provide an accessible overview of the article's key points. (June 2011)

Ellen Barkin
Barkin at the Ocean's Thirteen premiere, 2007.
Born	Ellen Rona Barkin (1954-04-16) April 16, 1954 (age 58) The Bronx, New York, United States
Occupation	Actress
Years active	Since 1982
Spouse	Gabriel Byrne (1988–1999; divorced) Ronald O. Perelman (2000–2006; divorced)
Children	2 (with Byrne)

Ellen Rona Barkin (born April 16, 1954) is an American actress.

Early life[link]

She was born in the Bronx, a borough of New York City, New York,^[1] the daughter of Evelyn (née Rozin), a hospital administrator who worked at Jamaica Hospital, and Sol Barkin, a chemical salesman.^[2][3][4] Barkin was raised in a lower-middle-class Jewish family,^[5] a descendant of immigrants from Siberia and the Russia-Poland border.^[6]

Barkin received her high school diploma at Manhattan's High School of Performing Arts.^[1] She then attended Hunter College and double majored in history and drama. At one point, Barkin wanted to teach ancient history. She continued her acting education at New York City's Actors Studio. According to Time, she studied acting for ten years before landing her first audition.^[7]

Career[link]

Ellen Barkin and Kate Bosworth at the Deauville American film festival in 2011

Her break-out role was in the comedy-drama film Diner (1982), written and directed by Barry Levinson,^[1] for which she received favorable reviews. Barkin was cast in the drama film Tender Mercies (1983) after impressing its director Bruce Beresford during an audition in New York City, despite her inexperience and his lack of familiarity with her work. Robert Duvall, who played the lead role in Tender Mercies, said of Barkin, "She brings a real credibility for that part, plus she was young and attractive and had a certain sense of edge, a danger for her that was good for that part."^[8] She also appeared in the 1983 rock & roll drama film Eddie and the Cruisers.

Barkin would later appear in several successful films, including the thrillers The Big Easy (1987), opposite Dennis Quaid and Sea of Love (1989), opposite Al Pacino. Barkin also appeared in Off-Broadway plays, including a role as one of the roommates in Extremities, about an intended rape victim played by Susan Sarandon who turns the tables on her attacker. About her performance in the play Eden Court, The New York Times critic Frank Rich summarized: "If it were really possible to give the kiss of life to a corpse, the actress Ellen Barkin would be the one to do it. In Eden Court, the moribund play that has brought her to the Promenade Theater, Miss Barkin is tantalizingly alive from her bouncing blond ponytail to the long legs that gyrate wildly and involuntarily every time an Elvis Presley record plays on stage".^[9]

Barkin has also done work in made-for-television films like Before Women Had Wings (1997) and The White River Kid (1999). Currently, she voices the start of each Theme Time Radio Hour with host Bob Dylan on XM's "Deep Tracks". In 2005, Barkin set up a film production company with her brother, George, along with her husband at the time and billionaire investor, Ronald Perelman.

Barkin appeared in her Broadway debut as Dr. Brookner in The Normal Heart, for which she won the 2011 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play.^[10]

Most recently, Barkin has received acclaim for her performance in Another Happy Day. IndieWire have cited her turn as one the best female performances of the year and have shortlisted her as an Academy Award for Best Actress contender.^[11]

Personal life[link]

Barkin has a brother, George, who was formerly the editor-in-chief of National Lampoon and High Times. Barkin is the mother of two children, Jack Daniel (born 1989) and Romy Marion (born 1992), from her first marriage, to actor Gabriel Byrne.^[1] The two separated in 1993 and divorced in 1999, but are still close;^[1] Byrne even attended Barkin's 2000 wedding to businessman Ronald Perelman.^[12] According to New York magazine, that marriage ended in a messy divorce in 2006 with Barkin receiving $40 million.^[13] In 2007, Barkin sued Perelman for $3.4 million in investment funds he allegedly promised to invest in their film production company.^[14] He was ordered to pay her $4.3 million. She is currently dating Sam Levinson.^[15]

Filmography[link]

See also[link]

	Biography portal
	Film portal
	New York City portal
	Television portal
	Theatre portal

• List of American film actresses
• List of Hunter College people
• List of Jewish American entertainers
• List of people from The Bronx

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Ellen Barkin

• Ellen Barkin at AllRovi
• Ellen Barkin at the Internet Broadway Database
• Ellen Barkin at the Internet Movie Database
• Ellen Barkin at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• Boxoffice data for Barkin
• Ellen Barkin at Emmys.com