Out of Sight
Director: Steven Soderbergh. Cast: George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez, Ving Rhames, Don Cheadle, Steve Zahn,
Albert Brooks, Dennis Farina, Catherine Keener, Nancy Allen. Screenplay: Scott Frank (based on the novel
by Elmore Leonard).
Steven Soderbergh's Out of Sight is a neat little flibbertigibbet of a movie, a little more of a
Rubik's cube than the material probably demands, but a fun excursion into '70s cool from a director who
has often been accused—sometimes fairly, sometimes not—of perpetrating a coolness of a whole different
sort. George Clooney stars as Jack Foley, a hair-swept-back, well cufflinked bank robber who seems a
little like Vincent Vega as played by Cary Grant. Foley's been in and out of jail more than a few times,
but compared to how many busts he's pulled off (numbered by one character at around 200), he's a
well-established model of suave criminal efficiency.
Plus he's just so damn cute, which is why Karen Sisco (Jennifer Lopez), a federal marshall who
happens to be standing outside the fence where Jack has dug his latest under-the-prison escape tunnel,
suddenly can't find it in herself to clock and cuff the guy like she would any other jailbreak. Instead,
she finds herself crammed with Jack into the trunk of Ving Rhames' getaway car. The two of them talk
about bank robbing methodologies and Faye Dunaway movies in such close succession that you can feel Scott
Frank's normally jaunty script striving a little self-consciously for that junk-culture hipster speak
that, rightly or wrongly, will ever after be credited as Quentin Tarantino's invention.
For the rest of the movie, Karen and Jack will stare at each other (well, figuratively) from their
opposite sides of the Cops 'n' Robbers divide, wondering what would have happened in an alternate
universe where they could doff all this criminal prosecution stuff and spend a late morning in bed. Lopez
and Clooney were similarly situated before this film as smoldering film stars waiting to happen, and
Out of Sight finally manages to break them both wide open as swoon-worthy stars, not just
decoration. Clooney stops tipping his head at all angles to prove his points, and Lopez gets to be more
than the siren who makes men do bad things. They're both just terrific, and they demonstrate their
subtle, potent talents by making their conversation scenes as electric and engaging as the inevitable and
heavily-advertised roll in the hay.
Unfortunately, the main vectors of the plot—whether Karen will track down Jack and his fugitive buddies
and what she/they will do if she does—keep the narrative idling in essentially the same neutral zone that
Sleepless in Seattle occupied for a full albeit far less crackling two hours: when will these
lovebirds finally get a chance to sit down and really meet? Put shortly, Out of Sight has sparks
aplenty, but it doesn't really go anywhere; Lopez and Clooney, for all their virtues, also don't have the
depth of experience as actors or characters that Pam Grier and Robert Forster shared in Jackie Brown, another Elmore Leonard adaptation with more heft and sincere
emotion than this one has.
Almost certainly wise to that shortcoming, Soderbergh fills out his cast with vivid character actors and
generously affords them all plenty of time and space to strut their stuff. In addition to Rhames, whose
rising celebrity is a well-deserved joy to watch, Steve Zahn (the coming-out pal in Reality Bites)
and Don Cheadle (Boogie Nights' porn star-turned-retail king) nimbly
portray a dopehead and hothead, respectively, who diversely involve themselves in the diamond heist that
Clooney and Rhames have engineered as their reunion gig.
The last few scenes of Out of Sight are real pistol-packers, springing agilely between suspense to
soft comedy, but the picture doesn't linger long in the memory; I felt the same to be true of
Soderbergh's 1989 Cannes champ sex, lies, and videotape, although his 1993 Depression-era fable
King of the Hill—no, not the series!—only gets better as time passes. Then again, you'll probably
never get two people who agree point for point on the comparative merits of each and every Soderbergh
picture. What we've got here is a scintillating romantic face-off that is slightly less than the sum of
its sparkling parts—a pleasurable and genial jewel-heist tale that itself is just shy of being a real
gem. Grade: B
- Academy Award Nominations:
- Best Adapted Screenplay: Scott Frank
- Best Editing: Anne V. Coates
- Other Awards:
- Writers Guild Awards—Best Adapted Screenplay: Scott Frank
- National Society of Film Critics—Best Picture; Best Director: Steven Soderbergh; Best Screenplay: Scott Frank
- Boston Society of Film Critics—Best Picture