| | The original hepcat spree, the big daddy of Rat Pack movies, the straight flush in a high-stakes game: yeah, it's Ocean's 11, baby. Long before George Clooney dared to rework this movie into a franchise, Frank Sinatra turned a straightforward heist picture into--well, in some ways, a star-studded but still straightforward heist picture. Ocean's 11 is sometimes a surprise to fans who expect a jokier, more freewheeling movie; the boys actually play it fairly straight in this one, and after all they're under the direction of Lewis Milestone, once the director of All Quiet on the Western Front. Sinatra is fairly effortless, Dean Martin gets loose on "Ain't That a Kick in the Head?", Sammy Davis, Jr., croons an approximation of a title tune, and Peter Lawford, Joey Bishop, and Angie Dickinson fill in the gaps. The lingo is fun (Richard Conte: "Give it to me straight, Doc--is it the big casino?"), the décor is eye-peeling, and the general ambience of 1960 Las Vegas has a great time-capsule quality. While they were shooting the picture, the members of the Rat Pack were also performing on stage at night, which suggests that the real fun were happening when the cameras weren't on. The swagger, however, endures. --Robert Horton More...
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