Ocean's Thirteen (PG)

There is one small bit of good news about Ocean's Thirteen: it's not as bad as Ocean's Twelve. But when you consider just how dismal the latter was, this nugget will hardly be cause for rejoicing.

How did it come to this? Steven Soderbergh's 2001 remake of paltry Rat Pack heist movie Ocean's Eleven was a Christmas bauble that should have been packed away with the rest of the decorations. Instead, they've decided to bring out a new one every two or three years.

The package, or rather the repackage, is a slick one. Put George Clooney and Brad Pitt front of house, dress the mood in retro Hollywood glamour, design a complex heist plot that's all about "fun" - and you're practically home and dry. It demands nothing of an audience but its money. This time, the story pivots on an elaborate revenge: Danny Ocean (Clooney) and his trusty lieutenant Rusty (Pitt) regroup the fellowship of the felons to mount a multimillion dollar sting on Vegas casino owner Willy Bank (Al Pacino), whose double-crossing of Danny's mentor Reuben (Elliott Gould) has put the poor man in hospital with a heart attack. Despite being told that they're "the Morecambe and Wise of the thievery world" by their fixer Eddie Izzard - a line that will mean precisely nothing to its target audience - Danny, Rusty and co set to work sabotaging the opening night of Bank's new hotel casino, a glitzy temple of gambling that's tasteless even by Vegas standards.

Screenwriters Brian Koppelman and David Levien - who co-wrote Rounders - break the plot into disparate skits and sketches whose coherence we have to take on trust. I could understand the fixing of the dice and the decks and the roulette wheel, I accepted the various daft wigs and false noses the gang members don in the course of the scam, and I was even willing to wave through the fake earthquake that shuts down the casino's spiffy all-seeing computer system. But I couldn't fathom the involvement in the Mexican labour dispute, or how the FBI agent turned out to be bogus, or why Soderbergh has directed Ellen Barkin (the cast's token woman) so ungallantly.

Even more difficult is to care a rap for any of it; the thing unfolds without the tiniest scintilla of suspense, and its humour is entirely composed of in-jokes, like the exchange at the end when Brad tells George not to let his weight get out of hand next time, and George tells Brad to settle down and have a couple of kids. Hilarious, right?

Well no, actually. Ocean's Thirteen is one of those films boasting reports from the set about the great time the cast had with one another, and, really, what movie star wouldn't enjoy hanging out with friends and picking up a paycheck for this little work? Essentially, the Ocean films are about actors being made to look good: costume designer Louise Frogley's flattering clothes and the chunky sports watches everyone wears combined with the high-definition cinematography give it the look of a fashion spread. It's dazzling, for about 10 minutes.

There's a gambler's motto that Koppelman and Levien made a refrain in Rounders: "If you can't spot the sucker in your first half-hour at the table, then you are the sucker." They must have had the audience in mind when they wrote Ocean's Thirteen.