Lewis Milestone | 122 mins | TV | PG
“Remakes are not as good as the original” is one of the rules of filmmaking. Of course there are plenty of exceptions, and everyone has their own opinion, and most modern remakes are expressly about making a quick buck from a US audience who can’t watch a film and read at the same time rather than making a better quality film — but, more or less, the rule persists. It may have won him an Oscar, but the consensus seems to be that not even Martin Scorsese can overcome this rule.
Steven Soderbergh’s star-studded 2001 remake of Vegas-set Rat Pack vehicle Ocean’s Eleven, then, is widely seen as a rarity in bucking this trend. And that opinion is right. This original is a scrappier film, with a less focused story and a seemingly endless number of scenes that are seemingly endless, no doubt due to the indulgence of allowing the matey cast to improvise much of the dialogue.
Indeed, the whole film is more about its actors, their camaraderie and humour, than the heist itself, which is fairly basic… and yet still shown in mundane, repetitive detail. Soderbergh managed to create a likeable, funny crew and an exciting heist, not to mention a story that didn’t feel like it was meandering on with no purpose, besting the original in every respect.
It does have its moments: a couple of songs are shoehorned in (even if there’s only two or three and each gets two or three airings) and the cast do succeed in making some of their indulgences entertaining. Nonetheless, this would definitely be for Rat Pack fans only had it not been for the remake… and, really, there’s no reason the remake should change that.
The two Ocean’s Elevens stand as proof that, given the right filmmakers, a mediocre original can be remade into a highly entertaining film. That would be a good new rule for Hollywood to learn.
100Films.co.uk 
I believe it’s very unfair to rate old movies by today’s standards. We all must remember that these old movies were “Hot Stuff”. There were no movies like we have today. Base the critique by the decade it was made. The fact that I’m 60 years old and saw this movie back in the day, it was a great movie in those days. Like a five star movie.
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I do think it’s important to remember the context of when movies were made, but it’s almost unavoidable that, as times change, so do our perspectives on them. Nonetheless, I’ve not heard someone say this was ever a five-star movie before; but we all have our favourites!
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