The reviews lean negative, and even the critics who enjoy the film do so with reservations. Where praise gathers, it gathers around the heist itself, which several find well staged, and around the film as a record of an unpolished, half-built Las Vegas caught in William Daniels’ Panavision photography. Nelson Riddle’s score and the musical turns from Sammy Davis Jr and Dean Martin are counted as incidental pleasures rather than reasons to watch.
The complaints are consistent: a slack pace, leads who seem to be coasting, and a tone that cannot decide between heist picture and musical comedy. More than one critic notes that the cast were playing Vegas shows at night while filming by day, and thinks it shows. The spread is wide, from Radio Times, which calls it a great and underrated caper, to Collider, which says it is mainly worth seeing to appreciate how the remake improves on it. The 1959 and 1960 notices are among the harshest; the film has never had much of a reputation to lose.