Delayed Reaction: Out of Sight

The Pitch: I know that Batman & Robin bombed, but George Clooney is a star, dammit, and getting him for something now is going to look really smart in a few years.

A career bank robber and a U.S. Marshal try to stop their attraction from getting the best of them.

If I'm being honest, I don't see the progression of a lot of filmmakers. Not really. Like, there isn't much about Memento that I see in Batman Begins to link them as Chris Nolan movies. I defy anyone to tell me that Ed Zwick's movies have a throughline. Occasionally though, the connection is too obvious to miss. Case in point: Out of Sight to Ocean's Eleven. There is no denying that O11 could only have come from the man who made Out of Sight. The zippy music. The freezing camera shots. The quippy dialogue. Even the casting. Ocean's 11 is one of my five favorite movies of all time, but I wonder if it still would be had I seen Out of Sight first. Ocean's Eleven was a sort of revelation for me with it's playfulness and style. Had I seen Out of Sight first, that wouldn't've felt so original. And, when you are talking about favorite films, there's a special sauce with a very specific formula. Change one thing about it (how you saw it, when you saw it, who you were with) and the whole assessment could change. I guess what I'm saying is, I sure am glad I took so long to see this.

Actually, I was convinced I had seen this movie before. I think some part of my brain combined From Dusk Til Dawn and Money Train and decided that they were Out of Sight. I only ended up seeing this "again" (so I thought) because I realized I didn't recall many details. It turns out, there was a reason for that. I hate making these discoveries, because I spent countless hours (not an exaggeration - I couldn't begin to count the amount of time) compiling and maintaining my list of movies I've seen. Finding out that I have any errors makes me want to audit the whole list. And I don't have that kind of time.

Onto the movie: It's no surprise that I liked this. I'm a Steven Soderbergh fan, and the fact that I love Ocean's Eleven almost necessities that I like this too. Clooney is in peak form. Ving Rhames, Don Cheadle, Catherine Keener, and Dennis Farina play very Soderbergh-ian characters. I've never been sold on Jennifer Lopez as an actress. This does hit her in a moment before she hit international superstardom (and the green dress). She can pull off tough and sexy at the same time, which is exactly what this character needs. I always forget that her character, Karen Sisco, is a recurring character in Elmore Leonard's work. As soon as I heard her name, I thought "you're not Carla Gugino". Lopez and Clooney have fine chemistry though, and that's all they really need. I prefer the slick stylistic assault of Ocean's Eleven more still, but this was a damn enjoyable movie, very much in the same vein.

Verdict: Strongly Recommend