ShootingShark Review of Out of Sight

Out of Sight (1998)

Flashy Adaptation Of Classic Elmore Leonard Pulp Crime Story

[6/10 · 24 July 2005]

Jack Foley is a chronic bank-robber and two-time con looking for the mythical big score when he escapes from a Miami jail by stuffing himself in the trunk of a car with a pretty federal marshal named Karen Sisco. Jack and Karen hit it off big time, despite being on opposite sides of the law, but a bungled robbery at a rich man's house in Detroit pits them against each other. Will love overcome business differences ? A well-made, sassy, punchy crime-thriller based on one of Elmore Leonard's great pulp crime novels, this movie is a bit schizophrenic. Half of it is hard-as-nails bad-boy action, with Clooney as a latter-day Cagney, busting heads and trading quips. The other half is a smoochy romantic pot-boiler with him in his more familiar Cary Grant persona. It's good, but he's a bit sappy at times (unlike, say, Chili Palmer in Get Shorty, which was made by the same writer and producers), which dissipates the tension and pads it out a bit much for my liking. Lopez is good too, cool and remote, with too much attitude and lipstick, but she's not quite in the Lana Turner / Barbara Stanwyck league. Scott Frank's screenplay is full of quotable dialogue and the film does not want for style; there is particularly brilliant editing by Anne V. Coates, with plenty of aptly-placed fades and jump-stills. I'm not quite sure why I didn't like this movie more - it's got plenty of pedigree and all the performances are good, particularly Cheadle as the scary but dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks gangster. I think it's really just because I didn't know who to identify with; Jack and Karen are pretty slick but they're a bit too perfect and untouchable at the same time. Well worth a viewing though. Both Keaton and Jackson appear unbilled, with the former reprising his unlikeable character from Jackie Brown. Later developed by the producers into a good TV show called Karen Sisco.