# Out of Sight (1998)

### reviewed by
Andrew Hicks

    OUT OF SIGHT
    A film review by Andrew Hicks
    Copyright 1998 Andrew Hicks

    ***1/2 (out of four)

Hollywood has a .750 batting average with Elmore Leonard adaptations. Last year's TOUCH was ill-conceived and just plain odd but GET SHORTY, JACKIE BROWN and now OUT OF SIGHT all were highly entertaining movies. Steven Soderburgh, master of sex, lies and videotape, now adds crime to his repertoire in this tale of bank robbery, prison, double-crossing, uncut diamonds and, oh yeah, true love.

George Clooney is the protagonist, a risky choice after such duds as BATMAN AND ROBIN and THE PEACEMAKER, but for once I didn't want to slap the taste out of his mouth. He plays his role in OUT OF SIGHT as the suave Cary Grant-type perfected in Hitchcock movies, the kind of guy to whom crime is just a profession like any other. Nowhere present is Clooney's usual ain't-I-sexy sneer -- there's just enough leftover lightheartedness to fit in with the Leonard style. Clooney is definitely a perfect successor to John Travolta in GET SHORTY.

Clooney plays a man who's robbed about 200 banks without ever using a gun. In the opening scene, he walks into one bank and robs it not only with ease but with charm. Of course, he gets caught, so it's not all good. It's while doing time in a Florida prison that Clooney learns of one rich inmate's (Albert Brooks in a frightful bald wig) collection of diamonds in Detroit. Clooney and cohort Ving Rhames plan the score, while protection artist and fight promoter Don Cheadle begins rival plans.

Meanwhile, there's Jennifer Lopez. Unintentionally funny in SELENA and intentionally funny in ANACONDA, she's finally graduated to a worthy role as the U.S. marshal who happens to be driving up to the jail on the night Clooney escapes. Rhames is waiting to give him a ride in a stolen car, and Lopez makes it a threesome, her hostage ass locked in a trunk with Clooney. He's covered in dirt and has a gun to her neck, and it's a little cramped in there, but they manage to make a love connection anyway, probably because it's a movie.

The relationship between Clooney and Lopez is at the heart of the movie, and one of the details that elevates it beyond your normal noir-ish crime story. The Leonard movies are more obsessed with dialogue than crime, and this is no exception. Although they're not really germane to the plot, Lopez's relationship with her father (Dennis Farina of GET SHORTY), Rhames' relationship with his Christian sister (you could call her Sister Christian) and a pop-in cameo by Michael Keaton all lend extra class to a movie already full of it.

OUT OF SIGHT spans at least three years but has a non-linear structure, focusing on the jailbreak / Brooks score and flashing back to earlier times. This is a movie with a brain, as smooth and calculated as the Clooney and Lopez characters themselves. The entire cast does the material justice -- Clooney and Lopez coming into their own, and Rhames and Cheadle cementing their positions as two of my favorites. Here's hoping future Leonard adaptations continue to carry the torch.

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