Review: Out of Sight
There's a wistful melancholy that permeates the beguilingly bluesy Out of Sight. Directed with renewed confidence by Steven Sodebergh (who faltered slightly after his auspicious debut, sex, lies and videotape a.k.a. the film that jumpstarted the Indie Renaissance), the film does full justice to the Elmore Leonard novel from which it was adapted.
Leonard's novels have always made for relatively simple transfers to the big screen. Part of this is due to Leonard's penchant for conversational dialogue, a rhythm difficult to master. He also lends a gritty glamour to his motley crew of misfits: bounty hunters and arms dealers (Jackie Brown), B-movie stars and strutting sweet talkers (Get Shorty), stigmatic social workers and opportunistic evangelists (Touch). In Out of Sight, we have a rascally bank robber (George Clooney), a va-va-voom Federal Marshal (Jennifer Lopez), and thugs with varying violent tendencies.
The bank robber, Jack Foley, opens the film with his latest heist: he strolls into the bank, tricks the teller into believing he has an armed partner, and walks away with the cash. No harm, no foul. Except his car won't start and he's given prime space in a Florida penitentiary. He breaks out with the aid of his pal and former fellow inmate, Buddy (Ving Rhames). A snag occurs in the form of Karen Sisco, a Federal Marshal who happens to be on the scene during their breakout. Buddy dumps her in the trunk of the getaway car. Jack sidles up next to her for the ride and one of the screen's sexiest, most off-kilter romances is born.
Clooney and Lopez all but combust onscreen. Her kittenish cool complements his roguish masculinity. Of course, the beauty and tragedy of the romance is the fact that they can't love unless it's on borrowed time and out of reality -- "Pretend it's not me," he tells her at one point. Jack wants to get caught but not to return to prison; she wants to do her duty but also follow her heart. When fate allows them some borrowed time, they seize it with the hands of weary dreamers. The scene plays like a fevered dream: Karen sits, sad and alone, in a nearly deserted restaurant. She spots Jack's reflection in the mirror. The snow is falling, their verbal dance begins. Sodebergh crisscrosses scenes of them undressing in the hotel room with their time at the restaurant. It's a sequence lifted directly from Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now, where lovers where post-coital scenes where intertwined with the lovemaking. The effect was potent then; in Out of Sight, it is throbbingly sensual.
The lovers collide once again, this time under more dire circumstances. Jack and Buddy are out for one last score: a stash of uncut diamonds that belongs to a loose-lipped former inmate, the Wall Street embezzler Richard Ripley (a nearly unrecognizable Albert Brooks). Unfortunately, the murderous former boxer, Snoopy (Don Cheadle), and his henchmen plan on doing away with Jack and Buddy and keeping the loot for themselves. They all converge in Ripley's sprawling mansion with Karen on their heels.
The elliptically told tale has that nouveau-retro style that Quentin Tarantino popularized. Sodebergh refines the funk without compromising the vibe. He's also finetuned the color palette he utilized in his pallid noir, The Underneath, and puts it to deft use here. His cast scores: Catherine Keener (Living in Oblivion) and Steve Zahn (That Thing You Do!) are memorable as Jack's colorfully attired ex-wife and stoner accomplice, respectively. Dennis Farina, as Karen's dad, performs with jaunty nonchalance. Cheadle is a particular standout -- he's the embodiment of menacing chill.
Lopez continues her progression towards finding her screen persona. When she first came on the scene, she struck me as pretty but bland. Her restraint was at odds with her Latina nature. Bob Rafelson released some of her fire in Blood and Wine, a nasty but uninvolving noir with Jack Nicholson and Michael Caine. However, she was saddled with a distracting accent. Oliver Stone did her one better by presenting her as a hot and bothered half-breed in his hallucinogenic noir, U-Turn. Her performance was an overlooked gem. Sodebergh manages to combine her sass and cool while eliciting a vulnerability that seduces instead of sedates.
Clooney is finally showcased in a role that cements his as a full-fledged leading man. Let people talk about Tom Hanks being today's Jimmy Stewart or Kevin Costner updating Gary Cooper. Neither Hanks nor Costner would have even been let on the lot. Clooney is one of the few, if the only actor today who would have flourished during Hollywood's Golden Age. He possesses Clark Gable's unapologetic masculinity, Spencer Tracy's naturalness, Cary Grant's debonair demeanor, and Errol Flynn's forgivably wicked, wicked ways.
What separates him from the pack, past and present, is his unique ability to be intimate onscreen. You feel as if he's whispering to you and you alone. The small screen enhances this quality but his previous cinematic outings have afforded him little opportunity to fully implement it. One Fine Day was an enjoyable romance in the Tracy-Hepburn vein, but he spent too much time bantering with little kids instead of wooing Michelle Pfeiffer. Batman and Robin, The Peacemaker and From Dusk ‘Til Dawn fell under genres that couldn't bend to his style. Out of Sight presents him in all his glory. Not only does he cut a dashingly romantic figure, he makes for an achingly doomed loser who lives in a world where last chances are made and broken in the redemptive arms of a newfound love.
Out of Sight
Directed by: Steven Sodebergh
Written by: Scott Frank; adapted from Elmore Leonard's novel
Starring: George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez, Ving Rhames, Albert Brooks, Don Cheadle, Dennis Farina, Luis Guzmán, Catherine Keener, Steve Zahn
