Las Vegas owes much of its sparkly reputations to the film Ocean’s 11, the forerunner to Ocean’s 8 featuring an all-female cast. The cast in 11 is the quintessential rat pack starring Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Peter Lawford and Sammy Davis Jr. The is a gang made up of WW II vets whose main task herein is to plot and execute a new year’s eve heist on about five casinos.
Remakes do not always improve the original, but 11 is a rare exception that proves the rule holds. The 1960 version feels somewhat anemic compared to Soderberg’s version, even with Sinatra and crones gracing the screens. Ocean’s 11 is overlong, plodding and lacks wit, the mischievous flicker, as well as the sleekness that made Clooney’s version a hit.
This film was something when it first came out, thanks mostly to the old cast’s charm. The team was always ember for the tabloid fire, and their exploits in Las Vegas became the showbiz lore. The film was scripted to accommodate their respective talents, which requires the pack to cast their images. Personality is favoured over style in 11; however, the cast’s deliberate cool often feels aloof. With time, attitudes have modernized, and what we thought was hip back then is merely dull material by today’s standards.
The core of the story makes sense to anyone who has watched its remake. Sinatra (Danny Ocean) schemes up a plot to rob five casinos in Las Vegas and make some millions in the process. The plans are very ambitious, and plans are made so that there is a power outage in all five casinos midnight of New Year’s Eve. The strategy needs plenty of support from henchmen, so the crew enlists ten more men from Danny Military days – the 82nd Airborne Division. The lot descend on Las Vegas to set things in motion. The team thinks it has got this, but things get out of hand, placing them all in danger.
It would have been a great piece as an hour thirty film, which would have given it laser focus that one would expect from a movie such as this. The film’s performance catches your attention and drags it along just for a time, but isn’t able to hold it thanks mostly to an uneven script and a forced comedy. Plus, you can’t help it but wonder why Davis and Martin seem to be in a sing-song mood while Sinatra is all quiet. Not quite sure what the director was up here, but it is what it is.
While it appears that the cast is having a great time, for some reason, their enthusiasm isn’t as contagious as one would expect from such a cast. A one-horse shot of Las Vegas isn’t a bad idea, rather than the glitzy sin City we know today. The friendship between the cast evokes nostalgia for an era we will never experience first-hand. Still, these only serve to brighten things up a little. The film is simply a movie about a heist full of inside jokes that an outside would struggle with.
