rated PG-13

One wonders what led Soderbergh and Clooney to finally just ditch the women. Could it be that mum Julia had more serious things to do? Possibly Catherine Zeta Jones wasn’t as fun a playmate on set as they’d hoped? Perhaps it finally occurred to them that the females in the Ocean’s numerical series were relegated to cursory, peripheral roles as shallow, moral bellwethers and superficial, emotional foils for the boys? Could be. Morals? Emotion? Is this my Danny Ocean?

Turns out, yes…but interestingly enough, it took the conspicuous absence of all sexual romance to express the core of the “Ocean’s” story—fraternity. Their snappy outfits, perfect manicures and smug bravado have always stood as clear evidence that these guys are in love with themselves, but in “13” we see that they actually love one another. The boys are not back in Vegas knocking over a casino for a superficial (if huge) financial payoff. Instead, they’re rallying to redeem the name and fortune of their friend and mentor, who was screwed out of his life’s savings by a corrupt and megalomaniac hotel developer (played by Al Pacino, who gnaws on the scenery with a surprisingly subdued menace). By putting themselves on the line for their friend, the team exhibits something only hinted at in previous episodes—heart.

Ringleaders Danny (George Clooney) and Rusty (Brad Pitt) have always interacted somewhat like an old married couple. They finish each other’s sentences and exchange inside-joke references that no one else understands. Some of the best scenes in the series are the quiet moments we get to share with these two alone. As if in direct answer to the lack of feminine energy, there’s a scene in “13” where Rusty finds Danny watching Oprah and drinking wine, eyes misty at the plight of homeless children on the show. “I was cutting some peppers,” lies Danny. The prolonged shot of the pair silently watching Oprah in the dark gets funnier by the second. The two characters show a remarkable camaraderie, and the depth of their mutual understanding and acceptance can really only be summed up as, well, love. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Beyond the bond we see between the alpha males, the latest Ocean’s installment also offers a deeper sense of the enduring connections within the rest of the pack. The ruthless teasing between Virgil (Casey Affleck) and Turk (Scott Caan) reminds us of a pair of adolescent boys stuck in the backseat on a long trip. The fact that everyone understands Yen (Shaobo Qin) perfectly, even though he doesn’t utter a word of English (okay, one word) is just fantastic. The crew functions not just as an assembled team of individual professionals, but more as a band of brothers. Closely knit and behind each other, they’ve been through hell and back together. They know each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Nothing is secret, although everything is unspoken. There comes a point at which this paradigm shifts, and one of the gang starts expressing himself in what could only be described as love letters. It’s at once wholly unexpected, intriguingly brave and truly hilarious.

Above and beyond the underlying homo-social commentary, “Ocean’s 13” delivers wonderfully on the promise of originality. The film deftly balances Bond-level gadgetry with good old fashioned criminality. The elaborate domino intricacy of combined cons, costumes, set-ups and double crosses continues to boggle and delight. The sheer number of grifts they twist together can seem something of a tangle at times, spanning from the heights of the tallest Las Vegas penthouse to the depths of a dusty Mexican dice factory, but they successfully manage to wind everything back out by the end. That there’s not a whiff of concern that they might fail is of little importance. We know they didn’t saddle up to this table to lose.

There are rumors on the street that this will be the last Ocean’s movie, and there’s a definite air of sentimentality onscreen. Comments are made about being “analog thieves in a digital world.” There’s another one of those quiet moments between Danny and Rusty, as they reminisce on the good old days, when the Strip was so much smaller, but seemed so big. The whole Ocean’s series was based on a 1960 “Rats Pack” movie, lets not forget, a harkening to simpler times from its very inception. Invoking Frank Sinatra on a number of occasions, the group seems to be shaking his hand, and saying, “thanks for the ride.”