Ratting Out The Pack

Before there was jiggy, there was cool.

And not that No Exit, nowheresville cool. This was sharkskin suits cool. Martini cool. Grown-up cool, with Francis Albert Sinatra as its pope and his boozing buddies as its priests.

The era still fascinates, but while HBO's The Rat Pack tries to capture it, they get it wrong. Star Ray Liotta's old Frank looks like an exhibit from the Hollywood Wax Museum; his rabbity middle-aged Frank, another goodfella. ''I miss my guys,'' he mourns long after the Pack is gone, and for good reason; while they're there, Joe Mantegna adds wit as a withdrawn Dino, and Don Cheadle suggests the self-loathing behind Sammy's smile. Without them, the movie disappears.

The Rat Pack skips out on the facts, too, reducing the group to a Kennedy fan club. The Rat Pack began as a Bogie-and-Bacall lark, with Sinatra joining pals like David Niven and Judy Garland for the ragtop ride. It was Bogie's club, and when Bogie died in 1957, Sinatra climbed into the driver's seat. As always, his genius lay not in imagination but interpretation. He had already adapted Bogart's on-screen outlaw status. Now he took on Bogart's circle of friends -- and even courted his widow.

But the Bacall romance didn't last and neither did the original clan. Sinatra wanted jesters, not wits. And so the new pack filled up with cronies and craps buddies, with eager tokens like Sammy Davis Jr. and happy-to-be-anywhere hangers-on like Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford. Only jaded Dean Martin remained his own man. Sinatra couldn't hurt him because Martin couldn't bring himself to care; he was the true chairman of the bored.

The other Rats weren't great actors; Martin and Sinatra could be. It happened on Some Came Running (1958, MGM, unrated, $29.98), which teamed Sinatra and Martin with mascot Shirley MacLaine and director Vincente Minnelli. Even the material was flattering -- a James Jones novel that let Sinatra play an intellectual while still cutting cards with Martin and shrugging off MacLaine's kisses. The story of a go-his-own-way guy facing down small-town hypocrites was made for Sinatra, and although Minnelli's wide-screen compositions are butchered on video, the movie hints at what this band could do when they tried.

But it was uncool to try too much, and the Pack saw other movies the way they saw their stage show at the Sands (TV Land's Frank, Dean & Sammy: An Evening With the Rat Pack, which isn't on tape, will be rebroadcast Dec. 31) -- as a private five-hand game that squares were occasionally allowed to ante into. And so Ocean's 11 (1960, Warner, unrated, $14.95), the first full-fledged Pack movie, jettisons the care of Running for off-the-cuff capers, ad-libs, and two Sammy Cahn-Jimmy Van Heusen songs. The lounge lingo is funny, and some wild swings connect, but it still startles to hear First Brother-in-Law Lawford muse, ''I think I'll buy me some votes and go into politics.'' And Martin's fantasy about ending women's suffrage and bringing back slavery makes the rest of the movie's sexism seem almost liberated by comparison, while a few of the in-jokes remain stubbornly inside.

Still, Ocean's 11 and its casino-robbery plot kept one tasseled-loafer foot grounded; its Rat Pack follow-ups were as jokey as a Sid Caesar parody. In 1962's Sergeants 3 (unavailable on tape) it's Gunga Din all over again, with Davis as the selfless sidekick; in Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964, Warner, unrated, $14.95), it's Sherwood Forest transplanted to 1928 Chicago as a Cahn-Van Heusen musical. Yet no one seems glad to be there anymore, and apart from a briefly rousing ''My Kind of Town,'' Sinatra remains glum. Only outsiders Peter Falk and Bing Crosby seem to be having any fun.

The Rat Pack movies ended after that, apart from cameos in 1984's Cannonball Run II. Not much of a legacy, on paper. ''We're just the cocktail of the moment, pally,'' Mantegna's Martin says in Pack. ''One of these days everybody's gonna wake up with a heck of a hangover, down two aspirin with a glass of tomato juice, and wonder what the hell all the fuss was about.''

Yet while that hangover has faded, the Pack hasn't. Sure, its ''let's-grab-some-ring-a-ding'' sexuality seems as antique as a bar girl in capri pants. But you can see its blueprint in all the Brat Packs and Black Packs that followed; you can glimpse Sinatra's blue-collar, antihero heroics in modern Jersey boys like Nicholson and Willis. Every night a '90s swinger heads out to a retro club or mixes that perfect martini or pledges to ''live, live, live until I die'' -- the rats scamper on. Rat Pack: C- Ocean's: B- Robin: C Running: B

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The Rat Pack 1998 HBO $79.99 R

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