47/100

In which a shockingly dull ensemble pulls off a surprisingly unimaginative heist. Occasional bursts of energy from cameo players (Red Skelton, Shirley MacLaine), along with Sammy Davis, Jr.'s warblings of "E.O. 11" (a song I can't help but hear as interpreted by Eugene Levy), only serve to underscore the general listlessness. Soderbergh's version is an improvement in almost every way, though I prefer Angie Dickinson here to Julia Roberts there (especially in that the character just tells Ocean off and never returns), and the original's closing-credits sequence, identifying the actors as their characters shuffle morosely down the Strip, may turn out to have more staying power than all the remake's disposable fun.

The fun original film Ocean's 11 has one of the greatest ensembles on screen. My pals Frank, Dean and Sammy all take over Las Vegas and cause some great shenanigans. It doesn't come to par with the 2001 remake but I still enjoyed it quite a bit. There wasn't a lot going on throughout the movie to make it anything that special. It all was generally flat and that was the big problem. The ending was a little bit of a let down also but it was a funny one. If you like jazz, scotch, poker and classy men then this is a must-see.

off-putting and misguided

Standard brat pack antics, nothing special. Worth it for seeing Vegas back in the day.

Earns two stars just for 1960 Vegas and the Rat Pack. The rest of the film is utterly forgettable. (Edit: adding half a star for the wonderful Shirley MacLaine cameo)

Even a film as dry as this one (for at least the first hour, it is bone dry), with as many as 12 or 13 characters on screen at a time, barely feels the flashy note and pitch of Las Vegas or The Rat Pack. So little to say about something so complicated and involved (like robbing five casinos simultaneously), with heist sequences that aren't very thrilling, particularly after so many sequences of men plotting the crime. In the end, all it can do is flop over into a pool of its own irony. Sigh.

My mother always joke after going to see someone in a play that isn't very good, she tells them than "it looks like you were having a lot of fun up there." There is no denying that this group is having a lot of fun (and some of them are fun to watch, mostly Sammy Davis and Akim Tamiroff), but so little of that trickles out to what is onscreen. The film is bland throughout, the characters completely interchangeable and the big heist at the end contains almost nothing spectacular about it. It is a nice portrait of what Las Vegas looked and felt like at the time (Milestone does have a nice eye for the locations and the various moods as the film progresses on), but as a narrative it is flat as can be

First impression: terrible.
Boring as shit. First 50 minutes literally nothing happens. Just bunch of men talking to each other. I wasn't even sure which one was Ocean.
Later on it gets better though. The second half was good.

"Disappointing - I expected this to be a lot better than its remake, whereas it was only slightly so."