Out of Sight

Out of Sight (1998)
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Actors: George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez, Don Cheadle

Synopsis: Serial bank robber Jack Foley (George Clooney) escapes from a Florida prison, and winds up inadvertently stashed in the boot of a getaway car with cop, Karen Sisco (Jennifer Lopez). Foley and fellow cons head to Detroit to embark on a diamond heist scouted from a previous jail stint, but with Sisco on the trail, will Foley let his romantic interest in her jeopardise the mission?

Review: Elmore Leonard’s deceptively pulpy crime narratives offer great cinematic ingredients to a canny filmmaker, and Steven Soderbergh makes expert use of what would ordinarily be a pretty humdrum story in his adaptation of ‘Out of Sight’. Soderbergh almost manages to transcend the genre through trusting in the great performances that Leonard’s meaty characterisations allow (George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez have never been better, Don Cheadle is great, and Steve Zahn’s stoner sidekick almost steals the film) and with his sleek and clever direction. He mixes the chronology of his two timeframes articulately, and makes great visual contrast of his two polar cities – Miami and Detroit.

Getting a release within months of Quentin Tarantino’s own Leonard adaptation, Jackie Brown; the two of them would make for an interesting double-bill – comparing how two expert filmmakers envision similar material with a marked difference. It would be Soderbergh’s polished, chameleon skills versus Tarantino’s extrovert, pop-culture infused modus operandi. (June 2013)