The best known and most beloved of all the Rat Pack pictures, Ocean's 11 (later remade by Steven Soderbergh with George Clooney in the lead) stars Frank Sinatra as Danny Ocean, the man with the plan. Danny and his eleven buddies - Sam Harmon (Dean Martin), Josh Howard (Sammy Davis Jr.), Jimmy Foster (Peter Lawford), Tony Bergdorf (Richard Conte), Mushy O'Connors (Joey Bishop), Roger Corneal (Henry Silva), Curley Steffens (Richard Benedict), Vince Massler (Buddy Lester), Peter Rheimer (Norman Fell), Louis Jackson (Clem Harvey) and the old man who came up with the idea, Spyros Acebos (Akim Tamiroff) - used to be in the army together. Ocean gathers the gang up once again so that they can help him and Acebos pull off the heist of a lifetime. Their plan? To blow all the lights in Las Vegas and knock over five casinos at the same time and to hopefully make it out with a cool eleven million dollars in cold, hard cash.

Ocean and his crew encounter a few problems along the way, like Ocean's estranged wife Beatrice (Angie Dickinson), Bergdorf's mother, Gracie (Jean Willes) and her sneak of a fiancé, Duke Santos (Cesar Romero). To complicate matters even more, one of Danny's many ex-girlfriends, Adele Ekstrom (Patrice Wymore), is running around Las Vegas at the same time.

Ocean's 11 is a fun film whose success rests primarily on the shoulders of its ultra cool cast. Sinatra plays it straight here with most of the comic relief coming from the very capable Dean Martin (with drink perpetually in hand) and the equally goofy Davis. While Ol' Blue Eyes isn't in the film as much as he is in some of his other starring vehicles (thanks to the ensemble casting) his performance definitely stands out in the film. A young Henry Silva is memorable as one of the co-conspirators, and it's interesting to see his jovial work here, particularly if you're familiar with him only from the Italian crime films where he specialized in hardboiled tough guy roles. Cameo appearances from Pinky Lee, a young Shirley MacLaine, and Red Skelton don't hurt matters in this department either, this is an exceptionally well cast film and the perfect type of movie for the Rat Pack to tackle.

Well shot on location in the Las Vegas of the time (a very different animal than the current day city of sin), Ocean's 11 is a film that looks as slick as its cast. Plenty of glitz and glamour is one display throughout the picture, with all sorts of swanky interiors used to play up the posh lifestyle that the major players in the film were so intent on enjoying. A few musical numbers pepper the film - notably Sammy Davis Jr. crooning away to 'Ee-OO-Eleven' and Dean Martin doing 'Ain't That A Kick In The Head' not once but twice. Throw in a burlesque act with a snake dancer and plenty of foxy ladies in the background of all the casino scenes and you can see how this is a Rat Pack film that absolutely looks the part.

Even at two hours in length, the film doesn't feel particularly padded or overly long. It moves at a good pace even if much of the running time is made of up dialogue intensive scenes rather than action material (the only action set piece being the bar brawl at the burlesque club). Of course, it all builds up to a fantastic twist ending, one that still plays well today, even if you've seen the film before. While some of the players were better in other solo efforts than they were here, Ocean's 11 remains, for many, the definitive Rat Pack film as it let's the boys play it up big on what was, at the time at least, their chosen stomping grounds.

Video:

Ocean's 11 looks pretty good in this VC-1 encoded 2.35.1 widescreen 1080p high definition transfer. Those familiar with the film on DVD will be pleased to see a noticeable upgrade in quality over the standard definition release. Detail is vastly improved and all the glitz and glamour of the old school Las Vegas sets and locations really come to life. Facial detail is exceptional for a fifty year old film while the texture in the different outfits and items in the background looks almost as if you could touch it. There aren't any compression artifacts or edge enhancement problems to complain about and any print damage that you might notice is very minor. Some scenes do look just a little bit noisy and detail isn't quite as sharp and impressive as a more modern film might be able to offer, but this has more to do with some of the softness that's inherent in the original photography rather than the disc itself. All in all, fans ought to be quite pleased with Warner's efforts here, as the movie really looks quite good.