Ocean's Eleven is the name of two American crime movies: the original of 1960, and the remake of 2001. The similar Ocean's Twelve is a sequel to the remake.

Ocean's Eleven (1960)

The original Ocean's Eleven was directed by Lewis Milestone and starred five Rat Packers: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford. Other stars included Angie Dickinson and Cesar Romero.

In the movie, a gang of ten World War II veterans led by Danny Ocean (Sinatra) rob five different Las Vegas casinos, (Sands, Desert Inn, Flamingo, Riviera, and Sahara) on a single New Year's Eve night.

They make excuses to their wives and head for Vegas.

The Rat Pack plans the elaborate heist with the precision of an Army operation. Sammy gets a job driving a garbage truck while others get jobs working the various casinos. Still another plants demolition charges on an electrical transmission tower. At exactly midnight on New Year's Eve, when everyone in every Vegas casino is singing "Auld Lang Syne" (in unison), the tower is blown up, Vegas goes dark, and the inside men sneak into the cashier's cages and stick up the cashiers. They dump the bags of loot in the hotel's garbage bin, go back inside and mingle with the crowd; when "Auld Lang Syne" is over, the lights come back on and the robbers walk out of the casino.

But one of them has a heart attack in the middle of the Las Vegas Strip and dies. Meanwhile, Cesar Romero, who is some sort of operator known to all the casino bigwigs, offers to recover the money for the casino bosses for a cut. He also happens to know Danny Ocean and his wife (who has arrived in Vegas for some reason). Romero manages to piece together the puzzle by the time the dead team member is buried. In the end, the money gets cremated along with the dead man.

Ocean's Eleven (2001)

The movie was re-made in 2001 by Steven Soderbergh. It stars George Clooney, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt, Elliott Gould, Casey Affleck, Don Cheadle, Bernie Mac, Andy Garcia, and Julia Roberts.

In this picture, Daniel Ocean (Clooney) et al. plan to rob three Las Vegas casinos: the Bellagio, The Mirage and the MGM Grand, all of which store their money in a central, hi-tech vault. All three casinos are owned by Terry Benedict (Garcia), the man currently dating Ocean's ex-wife, Tess (Roberts). The robbers foil the elaborate security mechanisms to get to the vault with the casino's money, and escape by disguising themselves as the SWAT team.

Other than the main character (Daniel Ocean), none of the robbers in the second movie share names with robbers in the first, although they do exhibit some of their personal quirks.

The Terry Benedict character bears some resemblance to Steve Wynn, the developer behind the Bellagio and the Mirage, and the forthcoming Wynn Las Vegas resort. One of Andy Garcia's lines in the movie (as Terry Benedict) reads, "If you should be picked up buying a $100,000 sports car in Newport Beach, I'm going to be extremely disappointed." This is a reference to the real-life 1994 kidnapping of Steve Wynn's daughter, Kevyn Wynn. Ray Cuddy, one of the kidnappers, was caught in Newport Beach a week after the incident trying to buy a Ferrari with cash.

External links

• Ocean's Eleven (2001) at the Internet Movie Database