Reuben Tishkoff: Who Plays Him and What Happens to Him

Reuben Tishkoff is a retired casino owner who finances and supports Danny Ocean's heists, and Elliott Gould plays him in every film of the Soderbergh trilogy. He first appears in Ocean's Eleven (2001), directed by Steven Soderbergh, where the plot summary describes him as the backer behind Danny and Rusty Ryan's crew of eleven specialists.

The credits use two forms of the name. Ocean's Eleven, Ocean's Twelve and Ocean's Thirteen list Elliott Gould as Reuben Tishkoff, while Ocean's Eight (2018), directed by Gary Ross, lists him simply as Reuben. It is the same character in all four films, which makes him one of the few figures to link the original trilogy with the spin-off.

If you are searching for him in the 1960 original, you will not find him there. The cast of the 1960 Ocean's Eleven, directed by Lewis Milestone, has no Reuben, so the character belongs to the Soderbergh era and its follow ups.

Gould's billing slips a little with each film: ninth in Ocean's Eleven, fourteenth in Ocean's Twelve, fourteenth again in Ocean's Thirteen and fifteenth in Ocean's Eight. That is a small part on the call sheet, but Reuben carries more story weight than his billing suggests, as Ocean's Thirteen shows.

Reuben's arc runs from backer in the first film, to a man making amends in the second, to the wronged party whose grudge becomes the plot of the third. In Ocean's Eleven, Danny Ocean is paroled from a New Jersey prison and plans to rob a vault shared by three casinos owned by Terry Benedict. Reuben, the retired casino owner, gives the crew backing, and the team builds a replica of the vault so they can rehearse. On the night of the boxing match they knock out power with an electromagnetic pulse, and Benedict's security staff watch a looped recording while the money leaves.

Ocean's Twelve (2004) puts the consequences on the table. Benedict finds all eleven crew members and demands his money back, with interest, in two weeks. The crew scatters to Europe, the Night Fox (the baron François Toulour) bets Danny that he can reach a Fabergé egg first, and Europol detective Isabel Lahiri keeps closing in. When the dust settles, Toulour pays Benedict, and Reuben delivers the money and promises Benedict there will be no more jobs against his casinos.

Ocean's Thirteen (2007) is the film that belongs most to Reuben. He partners with the ruthless casino owner Willy Bank, played by Al Pacino, on a new Las Vegas hotel. Bank cheats him out of his share and leaves him with only a token chip. Reuben suffers a heart attack and ends up bedridden, and Danny gathers the crew to wreck Bank's opening night. Their plan is to rig the tables and slot machines so players win big, to beat the casino's cheat detection system, and to ruin the hotel's chances of a top industry rating. When their drilling equipment fails, they go to Benedict for money, and his price is Bank's diamonds.

The plan works and Bank's opening night is ruined.

Reuben's closest ties run to Danny Ocean, and his sharpest conflicts are with the two casino owners, Terry Benedict and Willy Bank. In Ocean's Eleven he supports Danny Ocean and Rusty Ryan, George Clooney's and Brad Pitt's characters, as they assemble the crew. In Ocean's Thirteen it is Danny who rallies the whole team on his behalf.

The link to Terry Benedict, played by Andy Garcia, is the most unusual one. In Ocean's Twelve, Reuben is the person who returns the money to Benedict and promises that his casinos are off limits. By Ocean's Thirteen, the crew has to ask Benedict for funding. Benedict even ends the film publicly credited with a large donation, which Danny arranged in his name.

Willy Bank is the antagonist who defines Reuben's late arc. Al Pacino plays him as a ruthless developer who pushes Reuben out of their shared Las Vegas casino deal, and every move the crew makes in Ocean's Thirteen answers that single betrayal.

The crew itself, the likes of Linus Caldwell, Basher Tarr, Frank Catton and Saul Bloom, appears in Reuben's films as the ensemble he supports. The link to Debbie Ocean is thinner: Reuben is credited in Ocean's Eight, which follows Danny's sister, though the plot summary for that film does not describe his scenes.

In Ocean's Thirteen, Reuben survives his heart attack and, once the crew succeeds, is given a casino of his own. That outcome is the payoff for the revenge story: the crew uses part of the take to set him up, so the man Bank pushed out of the deal ends with something larger than the share he lost.

Reuben's own ending is quieter than the revenge around it, because he is no longer the sick partner left with a token chip.

Reuben is credited as Reuben in Ocean's Eight (2018), and none of the four films records his death.

Reuben's three best moments are his backing in Ocean's Eleven, his repayment of Terry Benedict in Ocean's Twelve and his betrayal by Willy Bank in Ocean's Thirteen. In my opinion, they work because the plot hangs on his money or his pride rather than on a gadget.

The backing in Ocean's Eleven. A heist on a vault shared by three casinos needs funding, a replica vault for rehearsal and a crew of specialists, and Reuben is the retired casino owner who makes that possible. It is a modest piece of the film, yet, without it, the pulse blackout and the looped security footage never get built.

The repayment in Ocean's Twelve. After a film of failed plans in Europe and a Fabergé egg bet, it is Reuben who delivers the money to Benedict and promises no more jobs against his casinos. This is the quietest, most adult beat in the series, a heist film ending on a debt being settled.

The betrayal in Ocean's Thirteen. Bank leaving Reuben with a single token chip is the cleanest motive any film in the series has. Nobody needs a vault or a diamond to want revenge, and, as an opinion, that simplicity is why Thirteen holds together despite its busy rigged casino plan.

If you are new to the character, start with Ocean's Thirteen for the strongest Reuben story, then go back to Ocean's Eleven to see where he began.