It’s one of the smuggest franchises in cinema, but it’s also a guilty pleasure to watch. You know the score. Steven Soderbergh gathers the usual suspects around George Clooney and Brad Pitt, and they pull off an impossible heist.

But to make them look good they need a really chunky villain, and they don’t come much chillier than Willie Banks, played by Al Pacino. His spanking new high-rise casino in Las Vegas is a cash-making obscenity. But far worse is the fact that he has double-crossed that old-fashioned fruit, Reuben Tishkoff (Elliot Gould), who is forced to retire to his hospital bed while Danny Ocean (Clooney) and his trusty side-kick, Rusty Ryan (Pitt), figure out how to hit Pacino where it hurts: namely his pockets, and his diamonds.

The running joke of this franchise, which started life as a nostalgic homage to Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack, is that there is, indeed, something called honour among thieves. “You shook Sinatra’s hand” is a constant refrain, and the implicit accusation forever levelled against Pacino, who clearly has broken the code.

Revenge for Pacino's moral crime is a fiendishly complicated dish, but it’s also tremendous fun. The Michelin Man who arrives incognito to grade the services at Pacino’s new gaff on the strip is, in no particular order, poisoned, gassed, attacked by legions of bed bugs, and inadvertently booted out of his room.

This is a genre film that champions grace and manners. Soderbergh is a sort of grown-up version of Quentin Tarantino. The issues are as loaded as the dice. The Mexican factory which makes the chips for Pacino’s mega-casino is an uncomfortable reminder of what life is like on a fiver a week. But the five-star nostalgia is so gorgeous that I doubt many will actually notice. Brad and George lean over a stone railing by a man-made canal riffing about whatever happened to the Sands, the Desert Inn, and the Dunes. “The town has changed,” muses Clooney.

So too have films. And this is Soderbergh’s point: that fiendishly clever new gadgets – be they cameras or safe-crackers – can work with old-fashioned morals to brilliant effect. We forget that at our peril. This point alone is reason enough why Ocean’s Thirteen is the best of Soderbergh’s heists by a considerable stretch. The visceral moments of justice are peppered with ironies. “Are you ready?” asks Clooney of one of his adoring goons. “I was born ready,” replies the goon. Gentleman George rolls his eyeballs.

There is a 1960s split-screen sequence as Ocean’s thirteen go about their business on the opening night of Pacino’s casino. Moments that must have cost millions are thrown around like confetti. A scene where Clooney and Pitt weep while watching Oprah Winfrey gushing over orphans in a hotel suite is quite simply sublime. Soderbergh’s sophisticated humour has never looked so fresh and sharp. He is too clever and subtle a director to let anyone forget that he has loyalties to Europe and America; hence the deliberate quirky mix of English and American actors and accents. Is the film too frothy for Cannes? Of course it is. But I’ve yet to hear anyone complain.

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