Ee-Oh-11
Ocean’s 11 is a classic heist film. A group of former 82nd Airborne paratroopers are brought together by Danny Ocean (Sinatra) to pull off a five casino heist in Vegas on New Years Eve. The plan was concoted by a criminal ‘mastermind’ played by Akim Tamiroff’s character, Acebos. The first hour of this two hour and seven minute film sees the team coming together. Sam Harmon (Dean Martin) comes in from Hawaii, Tony Bergdorf (Richard Conte), a skilled electrician, gets out of prison, and is convinced by Roger Corneal
(Henry Silva) to join in, Sammy Davis, Jr., a sanitation truck driver in Vegas, is convinced to join as well and so on. The crew all comes together and they descend upon Vegas in the days before New Years to prep each casino for the heist. Each man plays a role in getting each of the five casinos set for a timed heist.
Initially, things go fairly well, but a large part of the film is in dealing with the aftermath of that initial heist. One of the men dies on the same night and then there is Duke Santos (Cesar Romero) who makes things further complicated for the 11. The script does a superb job of keeping you wondering what exactly is going to happen until the final moments when all is revealed. Even though I’ve seen Ocean’s 11 several times, that layer of suspense that is created here is palpable today.
There’s an awful lot to like about this movie. The actors, the characters, the sets, the music, the story and dialogue — it all comes together to form what I consider a truly classic movie that has stood the test of time and is still a treat to watch today as it was ten years ago for me.
50th Anniversary Blu-ray
Other than the ’50th Anniversary’ banner on the box art, there is no way to tell this is an anniversary release. That’s really not important though, what is important is the effort that Warner put into the presentation quality. Expect a very crisp, and a very colorful 16×9, 2.4:1 image here. The image quality is excellent and I have no complaints about it at all. I didn’t see any grain or broken scenes, very impressive. Also included is a DTS-HD Master Audio 1.0 track that sounds great. Multiple language tracks are included too in addition to English, such as French, German, Spanish, and Portugeuse. All of these and more are also subtitled, too.
There are also a few extra features including:
-Audio Commentary with Frank Sinatra, Jr., and Angie Dickinson
-Interactive Las Vegas Then And Now Map – A map of the five casinos is shown, just like it was in the movie. Using your remote, you can select any of the casinos and a short video (one and a half to five minutes) will play featuring someone who is familiar with that casino from back in the day. Some vintage footage is also shared.
-The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (SD, 3m45s) – The video here is very rough, but what you get here is Sinatra hosting The Tonight Show and he and Angie reminisce about the film.
-Tropicana Museum Vignettes (SD, 1m40s) – Steve Cutler, the curator of the Legends of Las Vegas Museum, talks a bit about the film and Vegas.
-Trailers – Two trailers of the movie.
With that, lets get to the summary..
