Ocean's Thirteen (HD DVD)

While the Ocean's crew was never quite able to duplicate how great the first film was, I do think Ocean's Thirteen is a slight improvement on the second film, which I think most people agree with me in thinking it isn't the greatest. However, I will say that now owning all three of the films it is a lot of fun to watch them all together; as a collection they are quite strong.

In Eleven they busted up casino tycoon Terry Benedict, in the second film they are on the run from Benedict and now in the third they work hand in hand with Benedict to takedown another Vegas casino owner in Willy Bank played by Al Pacino. Bank has busted up one of Ocean's buddies, Reuben Tishkoff (Elliott Gould), and you don't hurt one of the boys and get away with it.

The heist is over the top, but there is no denying Soderbergh's execution of it all, the guy knows what he is doing. On top of that, it would be hard to get all these guys together and fuck it up. People just love to see this bunch working together in a fun movie, and that is what you get with Ocean's Thirteen.

Now, there is an unfortunate bit of news for DVD owners, the best part of this HD DVD is the exclusive audio commentary with director Steven Soderbergh and writers Brian Koppelman and David Levien. Yeah, it's not available on the DVD for some reason and it is fantastic. Unfortunately you can never really tell who is talking between the two writers, but Soderbergh is easy to pick out. If you were looking forward to an Ocean's 14 Soderbergh squashes that and he even talks about why Ocean's Twelve was not in Vegas and why they chose to close out the trilogy in Vegas.

On top of that there is a rather interesting documentary on the most famous heists in history that is also exclusive to the HD DVD which is pretty good, and then there is the small batch of features you will also found on the DVD including deleted scenes, a Vegas based feature and a tour of a Vegas casino with Ocean's producer Jerry Weintraub.

If you are an owner of the first two Ocean's films then I would certainly recommend adding this one to your collection, it is, at the very least, better than the second film. However, if you didn't even bother to pick up the second film on DVD then I wouldn't waste my time if I were you to pick up this one, you would be better off just watching Eleven again.