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 .
serving america for almost 1/20th of a century !