Out Of Sight 1998

A thrilling fast moving heist movie with perfect ingredients including a terrific script based on a elmore leonard novel, direction with verve and style by Steven Soderbergh and a dream cast that is perfection. Also added to the heist is a jail break, a smart ass bank robbery that begins the film in a flashback and a sexy romantic relationship that hops skips and jumps through the film. The cast is headed by George Clooney at the height of his likeability and male beauty who plays a life time bank robber who meets his match with a female beauty federal marshal and the sparks and sexual chemistry soars. They meet kinda cute and spend some time locked in the trunk of a car where they flirt and discuss movies, very smart and sexy. The marshal is played good and sexy by a surprisingly good and not surprisingly sexy Jennifer Lopez who has never been or done anything better than this part. Set in color drenched Florida, (the colors are dazzling and deep) and a cold blue tinted Detroit where the movie goes back and forth in time. The spaces are good and busy filled with movement and some wonderful performances by many actors at the beginning of their careers including the great Don Cheadle in a breakthrough performance as an ex con and boxer looking for some loose change, Catherine Keener, Luis Guzman, Albert Brooks, Ving Rhames, Viola Davis, Steve Zahn, Nancy Allen and in two uncredited cameros Michael Keaton and Samuel L. Jackson. The film harks back to those little fast and loose Warner Crime movies of the 30’s and 40’s and I have no problem seeing Cagney and Maybe Bette Davis or Joan Blondell or Ann Sheridan doing the Clooney and Lopez roles. The eccentric and unpredictable National Society of Film Critics picked it as the best film of 1998. This movie is fun. One of the 10 best films of 1998.