Released to coincide with the DVD release of Ocean's Thirteen, director Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Trilogy boxed set is currently the only way to get Ocean's Eleven and Ocean's Twelve on a high def format (the set is available on both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray formats). Ocean's Thirteen is available on its own but if you want all three films together with 1080p transfers, this set is your only option for now.

Ocean's Eleven (2001):

A remake of Lewis Milestone's 1960 Rat Pack classic, Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven exudes cool. The film follows Danny Ocean (George Clooney), a master planner recently released from prison, who gathers together ten accomplices to assist him in pulling off the biggest heist in history. Danny gets the word out and gathers up his team - Rusty (Brad Pitt), a cards wiz and Danny's right hand man; Linus Caldwell (Matt Damon), a pickpocket; Basher Tarr, a pyrotechnics expert; Reuben Tishkoff (Elliott Gould), the money man; Virgil (Casey Affleck) and Turk Malloy (Scott Caan), the drivers; Frank Catton (Bernie Mack), a card dealer working from the inside; Saul Bloom (Carl Reiner), a retired weapons dealer; Livingston Dell (Eddie Jemison), a communications technology expert; and last but not least, Yen (Shaobo Qin), a Chinese acrobat.

Ocean's plan? To rob three of Las Vegas' biggest casinos - The Bellagio, The MGM Grand and The Mirage - at the same time during a boxing match that the crew hopes will keep everyone distracted enough for this to work. There's a bit more to this than simply $160 million dollars in cash, however. The three casinos are owned by Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia), a sleazy business mogul who just so happens to take a liking to Danny's pretty ex-wife, Tess (Julia Roberts). Danny has his own code of ethics though and he insists that his team follow three simple rules - no blood, don't rob anyone who doesn't deserve it, and do it like you've got nothing to lose.

Filled with some snappy dialogue and clever banter and more than a couple of really enjoyable performances, Ocean's Eleven turns out to be a whole lot of slick, stylish fun. Clooney is perfect for the part and he brings a great sense of calm professionalism to the part that makes the prospect of the heist more believable than it would be otherwise. He simply looks and acts the part. Supporting roles are also handled well, with Pitt and Garcia standing out from the pack. Matt Damn and Julie Roberts are also solid in their respective parts and the always enjoyable Elliot Gould proves to be fun as well.

As strong as the performances are, it's the camera work and the script that really stick with you. Soderbergh has made sure that his movie looks fantastic from start to finish. The lighting and the cinematography are top notch and do a fantastic job of capturing the glitz and the glamour of the Las Vegas strip. The script is tense and clever and it goes into enough detail in regards to the planning of the heist that it allows us to believe that these guys might just be able to pull this job off after all, even if a few of them are a little rough around the edges. The romantic subplot fits in nicely with the central heist story even if it's definitely a cliché and more than a little predictable.

If the film lacks any real meat, so what? It's an enjoyable slice of entertainment, the best kind of Hollywood popcorn film devoid of any real message or social commentary but packed full of cool. It's difficult not to have a good time with this film and even if big budget blockbuster films aren't your bag, Ocean's Eleven is done well enough that it shouldn't matter. Appreciate this one for what it is, one hundred and sixteen minutes of fun at the movies.

Ocean's Twelve (2004):

When the first film made more money at the box office than Ocean and his crew did with their heist, it surprised no one that Soderbergh and Warner Brothers brought the original crew back for a second run.

Three years after Danny Ocean and his team robbed Terry Benedict of $160 million dollars, the crew have calmed down and enjoyed the good life. That's all about to change, however, because someone told Benedict who was responsible. Benedict contacts Ocean and his team one at a time and let's them know that they have two weeks to give him back the money, plus interest. Unfortunately, most of the money is gone - it's been spent.

Ocean calls his crew together once again to pull off an even bigger heist. This time they're going to go to Europe and hit Amsterdam, Rome and Europe. But there's a catch! A master thief known as the Night Fox (Vincent Cassel) wants to challenge Ocean and his team to see who the best thief really is. With time running out and Benedict putting increasing pressure on everyone involved, Ocean realizes that they have to accept the Night Fox's challenge and beat him if they don't want Benedict to take care of them for good.

Ocean's Twelve starts off with a fair bit of promise. It's set up well and it gives Ocean a valid reason to want to go to the effort of getting everyone together to pull of another complicated string of heists. Unfortunately the film takes the quirks of the large A-list cast that made the first film so much fun and beats us over the head with it. Pointless cameos from the likes of Eddie Izzard and Bruce Willis are distracting and the addition of Catherine Zeta Jones adds little to the story other than some nice eye candy. The snappy dialogue is turned up too high to the point where it feels forced and Soderbergh's tendency to take the funky camera work to the extreme results in an over baked picture that is literally way too much of a good thing.

The film isn't a complete failure - the European locations are very nicely photographed and provide a great playground for the cast to do their thing in. Vincent Cassel is also enjoyable as the French master thief out to show Ocean up. Unfortunately, Ocean's crewmembers aren't given sufficient reason to be on the job like they were in the first film and because of this the picture winds up feeling like little more than a bunch of famous people showing up in the movie simply because they're all famous people. Ocean's Twelve is a misguided case of celebrity overdose with a few moments where an interesting premise shines through.

Ocean's Thirteen (2007):

After the events of Ocean's Twelve we see Reuben Tishkoff joining forces with Vegas casino mogul Willie Bank (Al Pacino) to build a hotel of their own. Unfortunately for Reuben, Willie isn't the most trustworthy guy around and he winds up cutting him out of the deal, resulting in a heart attack that puts Reuben in the hospital.

When Danny gets word of what's happened to his old pal Reuben, he decides Willie needs a taste of his own medicine and so he decides to call the team in to rip off Bank's new casino on the very night it's set to open. Helping them out this go round will be none other than their former arch rival, Terry Benedict, who has nothing but contempt for Bank. Not only do they plan to rob him blind, but they're also going to mess with his operations to ensure that Bank doesn't win a prestigious 'Five Diamond' award.

A noted improvement after the weak second film, Ocean's Thirteen, like the first film, puts the story ahead of the celebrity worship and delivers another stylish and entertaining heist film. The dialogue flows better and the camera work, while still containing its fair share of odd shots, is reeled in to the point where once again the film just looks really, really slick. Consider this third film a return to form of sorts. Throwing the uber tanned Al Pacino into the mix works nicely as he proves a nice counterpart to Garcia's sleazy casino mogul, and tossing Ellen Barkin into the mix works well even if her character is one dimensional. Carl Reiner as the English hotel reviewer steals the show and helps flesh out the supporting cast nicely.

The film's real flaw is the lack of tension. The movie takes longer to get moving than it should and where the first film gave us enough of the planning phase to make the heist believable, this time around there's too much planning and not enough heist. The other problem is Brad Pitt. While Pitt is a fine actor, here he's given little to do aside from standing around looking handsome. Granted, he does this well and he fits in with the glitzy and glamorous aesthetic that Soderbergh is obviously going for, but if he were chopped out of the picture entirely the film wouldn't suffer much even if some of the back and forth between he and Clooney is fun.

All in all, Ocean's Thirteen falls squarely in between the first two films. It's not as good as the first picture but it's a big improvement over the misguided second entry in the series. Once again, appreciate this one as a slick popcorn movie, a film meant to entertain and nothing more. On that level it works well. Yes, it's quite superficial and the characters don't really grow or develop much (it's assumed we know them well enough at this point) but everyone and everything looks great, the dialogue is snappy and the humor works well. The suspense isn't there to make this one a classic, but it's a fun time killer regardless and certainly worth a watch for those who have enjoyed the previous entries.

Video:

All three films in the boxed set are presented in 2.40.1 anamorphic widescreen in 1080p/VC-1 encoding. The first film looks the best of the three. While there are some minor compression artifacts in a few scenes, for the most part the black levels stay nice and strong and the color reproduction is very much spot on. There aren't any major problems with print damage at all though those looking for it will probably catch a couple of fleeting instances where some specks show up on the image. Aside from that, however, Ocean's Eleven looks pretty solid. Ocean's Twelve, for whatever reason, doesn't look quite as detailed as its predecessor. Colors aren't bad at all but there's a darker color palette employed in the film that does rob the picture of discernable background detail. Skin tones look good and there aren't any problems with mpeg compression or edge enhancement, though some digital noise is evident throughout. The most recent of the films in the set, Ocean's Thirteen, suffers from some of the same issues as the second film, though in the disc's defense, a lot of this has to do with the way that the film was shot. It's intentionally gritty looking and there are times where the colors are obviously boosted, and much of the film was shot with noticeably lower light than many films. On the plus side, the black levels are rock solid and wide angle and distance shots look quite nice - it's just that parts of the film are supposed to look 'rough' and as such, they do. Overall, the three discs in the collection look pretty good. Keeping in mind Soderbergh's tendency to shoot using less traditional methods than many of his contemporaries, the three movies look pretty close to their theatrical counterparts and the HD-DVD set does a good job of replicating the 'big screen' experience.

It should be noted that the HD-DVD release of Ocean's Thirteen in this set is a combo disc and so it contains a standard definition 2.40.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer of the film on the opposing side of the disc.