The two Ocean’s films play like different kinds of jazz: the 1960 original is cool, easy-listening — smooth, loose and just a little sloppy — while Steven Soderbergh’s 2001 remake is pure bebop, fast, tight, and meticulously arranged.
Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. didn’t so much act in Ocean’s 11 as hang out. The Rat Pack ruled Vegas, and the film let them do exactly that, drift through scenes, trade jokes, croon a tune or two and look impossibly relaxed while pretending to rob five casinos at once. The heist was never really the point; the vibe was. Sinatra hated rehearsals and insisted on one-take scenes, which gives the movie its boozy, improvisational rhythm. Fun and charming, sure but often off-key and, in places, tone-deaf. (The humor, in particular, with its sexist and racist undertones, has not aged well.)
Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven, by contrast, hits every cue. This is crisp, clockwork filmmaking — a movie engineered with the precision of one of Danny Ocean’s own heists, where every cut snaps into place and every gag lands perfectly on the downbeat. Every member of the crew is clearly sketched, from Brad Pitt’s sharply sarcastic, constantly snacking “Rusty” Ryan and Matt Damon’s eager but insecure Linus to the old-school Vegas smarm of Elliot Gould’s Reuben and the smooth-talking charm of inside man Frank Cattan, aka Bernie Mac. In the original, you’d be hard-pressed to name more than a couple members of the original cast. Soderbergh would go loose and shaggy in his own sequel, Ocean’s Twelve (2004), which feels closer in tone to the 1960 original, but for his first job, he gets away clean, leaving you grinning, and wondering how he pulled it off. — Scott Roxborough
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