Saw Ocean's Thirteen (thanks, Paul!) It was another heist film, fresh off the assembly line. The ensemble stalks around quipping and smirking and wearing sunglasses. The crosses are doubled, the security system is custom, the explosives are plastic, and the motivations are perfunctory. The film starts essentially in medias res, with the heist not even being introduced. We're just in the middle of the planning stages. It hardly matters what the heist is, of course, only that it exists. The cast has lost both girlfriends from the previous film but gained the cat-burglar and the villain from the first film who is now a kind-of-good guy. The film is a frothy, popcorny jaunt not meant to be taken seriously.
I'm getting pretty bored of the series by now which is lucky because it's over now. The films are essentially wish-fulfilment fantasies. The smart, cool guys who care deeply about handshakes and liquor and suits walk around and effortlessly outsmart the grim supercomputers and statistical models and all of the other symbols for the machinery which rules our lives. The wish being fulfilled here is the same as the one fulfilled when the rebels overthrow the cruel dictator: that we need not live our lives in this system. This dream has only become stronger in this modern age, when more and more is becoming remote and unreal. Indeed, dystopian films have become quite popular recently.
The film is not bad. Everyone is sort of on auto-pilot. The characters are all quip-delivery systems and therefore the actors don't have to do anything beyond affecting a detached, deadpan manner. The writer must have had fun but, again, beyond excessive over-complication, there's not much clever going on here. It's not bad, again, just bland-feeling.
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