Original's only save is its stars

By Jack Garner
Democrat and Chronicle

(December 7 , 2001) -- "We'll never be as cool as those guys," George Clooney said. "But we'll make a cooler movie."

That was the star's mantra as he and his partner, Steven Soderbergh, began to develop their remake of Ocean's Eleven.

The original version of the film defined the concept of cool, circa 1960. And those cool guys? Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop were collectively known as The Rat Pack -- and they were the Lords of Las Vegas.

Sinatra, Martin and Davis were the greatest lounge singers in the world. Lawford's brother-in-law had just been elected president of the United States, so the boys also had entree into Camelot.

More often, though, they preferred Las Vegas, the adult playground of America where the mob called the shots and the Rat Pack packed the house.

The height of cool was Sinatra, swinging gently over Nelson Riddle arrangements and engaging in playful nonsense over endless cocktails with his buddies Dino and Sammy.

When the opportunity came along to formalize the Vegas romps by making a movie, the gang went for it. It would be a story of bored Korean War veterans who stir up excitement by robbing five casinos on New Year's Eve.

Veteran director Lewis Milestone (who also All Quiet on the Western Front) was brought in to direct, but he probably had about as much control as the guys who tried to corral the Marx Brothers a generation earlier.

The Vegas part of the shoot reportedly took 25 days, of which Sinatra was around for nine. The boys shot during the day and performed gigs and cavorted at night.

The resulting film isn't especially good -- the acting is wily-nily, the character development is nil, and even something as elemental as blocking is sloppy. It looks like a bunch of friends who are a little peeved that they have to stop partying when that old guy in the corner says "action."

Sinatra and Co. tried a few movie encores -- Assault on a Queen and Robin and the Seven Hoods -- but they couldn't even match the mediocre accomplishment of Ocean's Eleven.