OUT OF SIGHT (61) (67 - second viewing)

Directed by: Steven Soderbergh

Starring: George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez, Ving Rhames, Albert Brooks

The Pitch: An escaped convict schemes to rob a millionaire financier while evading the professional (and welcoming the personal) attentions of a buxom federal marshal.

Theo Sez: Not entirely sure why I didn't love this, given how eminently loveable it is - cool music, snappy performances, stylish direction with just the right touch of amused detachment - but I suspect it falls between two stools, rhythm-wise at least. It doesn't try to dazzle with speed and dexterity, or the breathless plot-juggling of something like L. A. CONFIDENTIAL (its mildly fragmented structure comes across as a bit of fun more than anything) - like its source, one of Elmore Leonard's talky crime novels, it depends on the ebb and flow of conversation more than zingers and one-liners ; you might say it's legato rather than staccato - yet it doesn't prolong the rhythm into real-time heft (a la JACKIE BROWN) either, the kind of limpid weightiness that sticks to your bones. It's somewhere in between, soulful but emotionally weightless, full of droll humanising bits - a born-again bank robber who likes to confess his sins after every job, an assailant asking his intended victim (who also happens to be a conjuror's assistant) about the woman-sawn-in-half trick - yet good-humouredly dismissing the notion that its characters might be human beings. It's the kind of film where 'cool' - Clooney flicking on a lighter with a snap of his fingers, say - comes with an in-built irony, a certain wry sadness (the knowledge that he's just an ageing crook looking for a last big score, perhaps), which however isn't actually explored, merely suggested. Witty, accomplished and more or less disposable ; only in one sequence - the love scene, natch - does it really burst into song. [All of which remains true, oddly enough, on second viewing ; I just had a much better time, for some reason. I suspect it's mostly that my expectations were lower - and, when a film is as laid-back and light-hearted as this ("emotionally weightless," as I said before, only not necessarily in the pejorative), expectations make a difference. Plus of course, once you go in already knowing of its odd, shambling rhythm, you must admit Soderbergh maintains it admirably.]