Dave's Movie Reviews: 1960

6/28/2008

Original: Ocean’s Eleven (1960)

Director: Lewis Milestone
Writer: George Clayton Johnson (story) and Jack Golden Russell (story)
Genre: Comedy/Crime

Story

A group of war veterans decide to get back together when it sounds like they could make a big score on a Vegas heist. The eleven led by Danny Ocean (Frank Sinatra) plan to heist five casinos at the same time. Now all they have to do is figure out how to get away with it.

Everything Else

The directing of this original is plain and somewhat uneventful, but it gets the job done. The conversation between characters works well and flows with the story, but there are some weird cheesy singing scenes involving Sammy Davis Jr. that were a bit distracting (I still have “E-O-ELEVEN” stuck in my head weeks after viewing). Of course we would not expect the brilliant camera work of today’s films, but the camera work was crisp and clean for its time.

The acting was mostly solid from the main characters. Frank Sinatra did well, but did not provide the flair of Clooney and Dean Martin as well as the others just didn’t seem to make the film more interesting. Sammy Davis Jr. as I mentioned earlier was actually annoying, but he didn’t have too much singing time. The singing just didn’t seem to fit into the rest of the movie and the comedy was not hard hitting enough to really get the viewer going.

As far as quality of everything though, it was solid on all accounts. It has just been done better (we will get to that later with the remake).

The Real Deal

I saw this original long after seeing the remake with George Clooney and the rest of the stellar cast. Maybe this is why I did not like it as well. I liked the new version a lot and it had more comedy, action, twists, and thrills. This version is certainly a good movie, but we will have to stack it up to the new one to really get a feel for this whole remake business.

The Short Version

Raw Score: 703,222
Sharon Movie? Yes