Too much of everything

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

The 2001 version of Ocean's Eleven is one of my personal favorite movies. I had put off seeing it for a while because I tend to be a bit biased against remakes. But after seeing and liking it, I was eager to see the film it was based on. I don't really know what I expected going in to see the 1960 version, but it definitely wasn't what it turned out to be. Frankly, the remake far surpasses the original. I've talked to some people about it and they have said that it is unfair to compare the two films. If you can't compare an original film to its remake, then there is something seriously wrong.The two films bear little semblance to each other, even in terms of plot. In this movie, the protagonists all conspire to rob five Las Vegas casinos at the same time. Believe it or not, this is far less complicated than the plot of the remake. The idea here is that they cut the power to Vegas, enter the casinos, take the money, and leave. That's it. It's almost an hour before they even start planning the heist, and the sequence itself lasts only about five or ten minutes. Even if the thieves in the remake targeted only one casino, the heist serves as that movie's centerpiece; in the original, it feels like an afterthought. And there's nothing really interesting about how it's done. Some gimmicks are introduced, but they don't play any major role in the long run. For example, the Eleven put infrared paint of some kind around the casinos so they can easily navigate it in the dark. Considering how small the casinos appear to be, it seems like a flashlight would have sufficed.Another problem with hitting five casinos is that the Eleven are split up into five teams. In other words, we don't really get to know them very much. In the remake, every character had some kind of unique personality or ability. In this version, only a handful of the Eleven are memorable in any way. Peter Lawford plays a ne'er-do-well wealthy mama's boy. Richard Conte plays a Walter White-type who wants to provide for his family in the aftermath of his impending death. But that's pretty much it. When the heist is being planned, the arrival of a cowboy named Jackson is made a big deal of. The guy is then completely dropped from the story and makes no further appearances of note. Does anyone honestly remember the nuances of Henry Silva's character? How about Buddy Lester--how did he distinguish himself from the other actors? Characters should be the crux of a film like this--it's kind of implied in the title, after all.The movie is also incredibly dated. Most of the "humor" is years past its sell-by date--kind of like the actors. Most of the actors in this film are in their 40s; by modern standards, they look at least 55. Despite this, they are constantly surrounded by horny women who ogle and suck up to the main cast, something that is only in the movie to show how attractive its main characters supposedly are. Frank Sinatra, who also looks far beyond his 44 years, is cheating on his wife with a dissatisfied mistress. The subplot is only mentioned a couple of times before being quickly discarded; it only seems to exist to show that Ocean is a philanderer and therefore cool by the movie's standards. The portrayal of women in this movie was silly in 1960 and is arguably the funniest thing about it now, even if it's unintentional. Most of the actors aren't given any kind of challenging material, so trying to grade their acting is futile; it doesn't offer anything memorable good or bad. But Akim Tamiroff does have something to work with: he plays the perpetually nervous man organizing the heist. He's probably the worst actor I've ever seen. Maybe he just couldn't work with the script, but he bugs his eyes out at every opportunity and whoops and hollers like a rabid chihuahua at the slightest provocation.By the end of it all I was left wondering what the point had been. A lot of questions remained unanswered. Why did Richard Conte's character die in the middle of the heist after experiencing no symptoms in the few hours prior? What's going to happen between Danny and his wife, especially considering Angie Dickinson is given such high billing? Why did they choose to leave all the money in the garbage, where it could have been found by the police or lost? Why did they hide the money from Santos in the coffin, where it could have easily been discovered by church staff? Why are nubile 20-year-old girls mindlessly throwing themselves at 40+ men, with faces like road maps of Manhattan, within seconds of meeting them? I really wanted to like this movie. The remake is one of my favorites and I was hoping this could match it. It made me realize, however, why remakes should exist: to take sub par movies with interesting premises and make them actually deliver. This is the perfect example of that.

I don't blame Steven Soderburgh and company one bit for remaking the story of this crime bunch. The idea is great: rob three Vegas casinos by killing the power of the whole city for a few minutes. However, this original didn't deliver much on the idea outside of bringing together what was apparently the most star-studded cast of the decade. The problem with that is that most of the eleven look too similar to differentiate. At least eight of them wear the same suits and have basically the same hair styles. The only people I could tell apart were Danny Ocean, Josh, the guy who dresses like a cowboy, and sometimes Jimmy Foster. But, I guess that's conformist fifties values for you. The remake in 2001 learned from this by making all of the members of their eleven distinctly different and giving them each a memorable introduction. The story is similar to most crime movies with assembling the team and then getting through the heist, but everything moved pretty slowly. The scenes are long and there isn't that much that happens in most of them. Besides that, there are a some tangent story lines that get a little too much attention. The most prominent of these is Jimmy Foster's relationship with his mother and step-father, followed by Danny's strained relationship with his ex-wife Beatrice. All three of these minor characters got more exposition and attention than many of the eleven, which is kind of a problem considering the size of their roles in the overall plot. We don't actually meet most of the gang until the scene when they all gather around the pool table. This is one of the better scenes in the movie. Then there is the entire third act after the heist that deals with the aftermath of one of the team member's deaths and Jimmy Foster's fifth stepfather trying to catch the team for robbing all the casinos. There is a bit of a twist at the end when the remaining ten discover that all of their money has been cremated and they all walk off regretting the cost of their crime.It could have been much better in a technical sense. The acting was nothing special in any sense even if it wasn't overtly bad. The script was poorly paced, as I've stated before, and didn't give the characters much personality, which was too bad because the actors didn't either. It also spent more time showing what happens within the casino during the robbery than it did showing the actual robbery. I probably don't need to state why this is problematic. Any other problems I might have had with it were a result of late-fifties culture and style. I guess I've made it sound like there is nothing good about the execution, which isn't true. There are certainly things that the director and his crew did right, but it's not more than we've come to expect from any movie. It's like what you would get if you made a cake with slightly but noticeably unbalanced ingredients.If you're a fan of any of the 2000's Ocean movies, know that this is not an older version of the reboot in story or style. The same goes for those who liked this and are considering the reboot trilogy. If you like the "Rat Pack", then I guess this is a good pick, because I can't see many other reasons that people might like it. Overall Rating: 6/10.

The writing and the technical stuff make the 2001 do-over a better and flashier movie to watch, but you can't beat the original for the star quality - Sinatra, Dino, Sammy Jr., Lawford, Bishop, Angie - all the original Rat Packers in full glory. It's an OK movie, but even as a caper flick, the emphasis is more on the real-life camaraderie of the players than on the story itself. My summary line pretty much tells the story; all these guys were in a class by themselves at the top of the heap in Hollywood and the entertainment industry of the era.It was kind of interesting to catch the names of the headliners appearing at the five casinos targeted for the big heist in the story. None of them, except maybe for Danny Thomas and Red Skelton, were as big as the principals in the flick. And since I mention Skelton, his cameo was written very poorly I thought. He was made out to be a boorish dolt and a slug when his real persona was just the opposite. What a wasted moment.Now if you think about the story to any degree, a whole lot of things don't make much sense. How for example, did Dean Martin show up as a lounge act at one of the casinos? That was never explained unless I missed it. The back and forth intrusions by Richard Conte's character into secure areas to rig the wiring at the various showplaces relied on a lot of coincidental timing with his co-conspirators and nothing really ever interrupted his progress. Nothing ever goes that smooth. And then, as far as blowing the whole thing with the money in the coffin gimmick, since when does a coffin get cremated along with the body? If anything, that could have been written with Cesar Romero and the undertaker figuring things out and splitting the big pot between them.But in the end, how much of that really matters? This was the Rat Pack in full battle mode and they pulled it off without really pulling it off. They all had a good time, and probably even a better one off the set while trolling Las Vegas for real between filming. Sammy Davis Jr's. self-effacing comment probably said it best to sum up the feel-good camaraderie between himself and the rest of the Rat Packers - "I knew this color would come in handy some day."

There is something about heist pictures. Nearly all of them are very good and exciting and of all the genres, it's one of the most consistently good. Think about it--with films like "Rififi", "Grand Slam", "The Italian Job", "The Killing" and "Topkapi" it's easy to find a great heist film. Well, despite my trepidation, it turns out that "Ocean's Eleven" is also another dandy heist film. I say trepidation because I always assumed it was just a vanity project--an excuse for Sinatra and his friends to get together and make a film. Well, while this is true, the film also was quite nice--with a dandy script and nice acting all around.The film's title comes from Frank Sinatra's character's name--Danny Ocean. Danny is organizing a bunch of his old war buddies to commit the ultimate robbery--to simultaneously hit the five big casinos in Vegas. The planning is meticulous, the heist comes off without a hitch--but you KNOW with a film like this SOMETHING will go wrong, and by the end, that's exactly what happens. See it for yourself and you'll know what I mean.I really liked the movie. Although this WAS a bunch of friends getting together to make a film, they obviously cared to make a good one. The great twist ending sure helped but it also was nice that they gathered such an amazing ensemble cast. Well worth seeing--particularly so you can hear Sammy Davis deliver the line: "I knew this color would come in handy one day". Watch the film--you'll understand why it's so funny.