Not Just a Dingy Vegas Nightclub Act--Much Better than the Original Rat Pack's 1960 Version, and the Best of the Three Movies

Rating: 9/10 (11 June 2008)

For some reason, I never tire of seeing this film. It's not an academy-award winner, it doesn't make a statement about the human condition, and it certainly doesn't reference anything remotely truthful about real Vegas casinos. What it does do is simply entertain at a first-rate level for roughly two hours. And it's 100 times better than the original offering from 1960.
In 1960, several of Hollywood's biggest name talent, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop, turned up in Las Vegas to shoot a movie called "Ocean's Eleven". They shot the film by day and played the Vegas strip by night. These live acts proved so popular that the group returned to Vegas many times for years after the sets of the film were torn down and the production moved back to Hollywood. The film was about a Vegas heist by some amateur gamblers, but the live act, made up of the legendary "Rat Pack", became ever-associated with Vegas. However, the original "Ocean's Eleven" does not share the status of the Rat Pack's live offerings of the 1960's. Apparently, while shooting, Frank Sinatra refused to do multiple takes in many scenes as if he was bored with the project, and consequently the final cut of the movie suffered immensely.
Fast-forward 40 years. Stephen Soderbergh, on the heels of "Traffic", was given a large budget to remake "Ocean's Eleven". The cast is a host of current Hollywood notables, including Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Don Cheadle, Julia Roberts, and George Clooney as Danny Ocean, the character played by Sinatra. Strangely, the original 1960 production seems like a low-budget bad Vegas show when compared to the 2001 version. Not only is the more recent production much slicker and more finely tuned, the acting and the plot are far more compelling. Sort of like comparing the Flamingo Hotel to the Bellagio or the Venetian Room. There's no comparison.
The plot itself is simple enough: Danny Ocean and eleven brilliant but shady characters attempt to enact a heist on one of the major casinos in Vegas. Add to the stew, Tess, played by Julia Roberts, who was previous Ocean's wife but is now hooked with the casino's head-honcho, Terry Benedict, played with mostly cool detachment by Andy Garcia. This is not akin to robbing the Sands Casino when the strip was made up of these little 6-floor casinos where you could get a room for less than 10 bucks. The new version is like trying to rob the MGM Grand where billions of dollars enter the casino every year. The ultimate outcome is an outstanding textbook example of misdirection that is well worth a DVD purchase. It seems unusual today that there are few productions that are both as well-produced AND well-written. Unfortunately, the subsequent sequels do not measure up nearly as well.