I'm happy to credit film historian and broadcaster Karina Longworth's most recent podcast series on the lives and careers of Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. For pointing me at this and other Rat Pack-era movies starring some or all of the members of that particular clan.
This was the first feature to highlight in one film the three most prominent leaders of the Pack, so to speak, of Sinatra, Martin and Davis, as well as the more peripheral figures Peter Lawford, Joey Bishop and even Shirley MacLaine in a brief cameo. Unsurprisingly, considering the affinity most if not all of them had for the place, the action here centres on Las Vegas where Sinatra as Danny Ocean acts as the leader of his old ex-army company brought together by heist fixer and financier Akim Tamiroff to carry out, in one night, the major heist of five famous Vegas casinos, netting them all a cool million dollars in the process.
For many, the Rat Pack was that era's epitome of male cool but look closer today and like me, you might instead now see in the movie a bunch of middle-aged men mistreating their wives, patronising lower-level black employees and casually slapping the behind of a young woman who's just given a private massage to another of the Pack. The worst moment is when Davis himself is made the butt of a quite literally off-colour remark by his so-called buddies. Sure they all look smart in their natty suits and skinny ties as they man-bond and deliver a stream of acerbic one-liners but boorish behaviour, even by superstars, is still boorish behaviour and there's no way to condone such actions even when perpetrated with an accompanying song or smirk by Frankie and Dino.
Parking that, with some reservations, to one side, the film has a great premise, the simultaneous, meticulously-planned takedown of the casinos but unfortunately it takes an age to get going, with over an hour wasted for the sake of only the mildest of plot exposition or character development. Martin and Davis each get to sing a song or two along the way, although oddly enough not Sinatra, but I found myself just hurrying the movie along to the sting itself.
I loved the shots of old-time Vegas and the cool closing shot of the eleven walking out of picture as the famous real-life billboard of the Rat Pack comes into view behind them, but watching it, I felt the movie could have been sharper and snappier. I doubt it was an easy gig for veteran Lewis Milestone to keep his starry cast concentrating on their jobs and felt that sense of underlying indolence, which is counter to the precision required in the operation, worked against the movie's effectiveness.
I've heard somewhere that one definition of cool is to not seem as if you're trying but here it's taken too literally with the overall effect that the movie just lacked a spark to really jump-start it into life.
And ain't that a kick in the head...
