Out of Sight (1998)

Director: Steven Soderbergh                        Writer: Scott Frank & Elmore Leonard
Film Score: David Holmes                           Cinematography: Elliot Davis
Starring: George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez, Ving Rhames and Albert Brooks

I could say this is a poor man’s Get Shorty, but since both films came from the mind of the same author I can only say this is a lesser Elmore Leonard. Out of Sight tries valiantly to capture the magic of the earlier film, but just can’t do it. The direction is of lesser quality and the story isn’t quite as interesting, but the most glaring difference is that the cast is decidedly second-tier. Instead of John Travolta and Rene Russo, here we have George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez. They’re good, but . . . nowhere close to the lighting up the screen the way the earlier pair did. At the same time the story itself, while entertaining in a way, is ponderous and slow and ultimately disappointing, especially when compared to the earlier film. I don’t think it’s Elmore Leonard’s fault, I think the reason for the failure is attempting to make the film in a very different style, and yet being unable to resist trying to capture the magic of the earlier film.

The structure of the story is fairly interesting. The opening is an out of sequence shot of Clooney coming out of an office building, throwing his tie on the ground in anger and walking across the street to rob a bank. The robbery is ingenious, but he’s caught when his car won’t star. In a Florida prison he plans a breakout that works, but runs smack into federal agent Jennifer Lopez and he winds up in the trunk with her car as his driver, Ving Rhames, makes their getaway. But once the pair has gone their separate ways they can’t stop thinking about each other. Clooney is on his way to Detroit, the reason shown in a flashback of his time in a California prison where he became the protector of white-collar criminal Albert Brooks. It’s when he’s out of that prison that he goes to ask Brooks for a job and, insulted, leaves the building in a huff, precipitating the bank robbery in the introduction. In Detroit the caper goes horribly wrong but in the end love triumphs, with Samuel L. Jackson as the unwitting matchmaker.

As with all of Leonard’s novels, it’s a twisted tale that includes lots of comedy. Director Steven Soderbergh deliberately steers away from Quentin Tarantino’s style, using a very interesting color palate and inserting a dream sequence that is wonderfully surprising. The supporting cast also includes some great actors. Don Cheadle plays the convict shaking Brooks down in prison, but his role is a strange one, inconsistent, and just seems odd rather than compelling. Dennis Farina has a nice turn as Lopez’s daughter, but Michael Keaton has little more than a cameo as her current boyfriend. The great Viola Davis plays Cheadle’s girlfriend, and Luis Guzmán is the convict Clooney ratted out to make his escape in Florida. By far the worst casting choice, however, is Steve Zahn. He is totally out of place in this film, so much so that the first time I tried to watch it I turned it off as soon as he showed up.

With all this talent it seems as if the show should have worked. I absolutely love Albert Brooks, and the straight roles he’s been doing lately, like the one in Drive, are fantastic to watch. But even Brooks isn’t enough to save it for me. It’s an interesting film to watch, but I wouldn’t call it entertaining. David Holmes serves up a standard score. Perhaps if they’d had some iconic musical hook, like Booker T. and the M.G.s in Get Shorty, it would have helped. I don’t know. Out of Sight is a film that, on paper, seems like it should work and, to be fair, a lot of people really like it. I’m just not one of them. It’s a disappointing film for me and, in the end, anything that I have to make three attempts to get through is not something I’ll ever go back to.