Out Of Sight

Synopsis: Jack Foley (George Clooney) is a career criminal who in breaking out of a Florida penitentiary the help of his friend, Buddy (Ving Rhames) takes female US Marshall, Karen (Jennifer Lopez),  hostage. The two fall instantly in love and the rest of the film is a tussle between head and heart as Jack heads to Detroit to rob a crooked stockbroker (Albert Brooks) of $5m in uncut diamonds before former inmate, Maurice (Don Cheadle) who has the same idea, while Karen tries to bust his ass.

If Quentin Tarentino or the Coen brothers had directed this adaptation of the Elmore Leonard novel, and there are hints of these directors here, it might have worked. Instead it is directed by Steven Soderbergh, who not only reduces it to a kind of supposedly off-beat but actually lamely middle-of-the-road rom-com but makes it borderline incomprehensible.

From the get-go Out Of Sight makes little-to no-sense. Thus, when Foley breaks out of jail and he and Buddy kidnap Karen, no-one intervenes despite the fact that there are prison guards all over the place. As if intentionally trying to make life difficult for the viewer, Soderbergh throws in characters such as Catherine Keener’s Adele, Jack’s former wife,  Luis Guzman’s Chino, an escapee whom Jack set-up, Steve Zahn’s Glenn, a dim-witted former associate, Dennis Farina as Karen’s Dad, Michael Keaton as Karen’s boyfriend, none of whom are engaging characters and all of whom have little or nothing to do with the main story whilst Samuel L. Jackson is added to the film’s end as if setting us up for a sequel which we pray we'll never see. Toss in flashbacks and flashforwards, and even a dream sequence in which Karen has an erotic reverie about Jack and you’re spending most of the time trying to follow why and how anyone is doing anything as Jack and Karen’s romance progresses thanks to all manner of script contrivances.

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