Okay, here's the deal. You ever notice that some folks seem to make it in the film business despite themselves? There are folks that look like they could be major players, but they make decisions that are more suited to professional wrestling than the movies.
For every Sandra Bullock in Love Potion # 9, there's three Corey Feldman and (even worse) Corey Haim sagas. Start with promise and fizz out like a flat Coke on a summer morning. Take chances, you say? Sometimes, that's the key. I swear that the best decisions Kurt Russell ever made were to play Elvis and Snake Plissken. It shattered that Disney persona once and for all. Travolta likes to say his religion steered him, but Pulp Fiction, not L. Ron Hubbard, bought him a new life. Jon Voight had all but disappeared, and then, in one year, played an absolute nasty bastard of a snake poacher in Anaconda and woke up everybody for his support work in John Grisham's The Rainmaker. Object lesson? Maybe you need to quit shooting for the moon so much, and reach for the stars instead.
Take George Clooney, for example. He surfed into the movie business on the tidal wave of "E.R." He had the eyes, the smile, and women would've gladly cut off their toes with a carpet knife if they could get treated by Dr. Doug Ross of County General. He makes his big movie debut in From Dusk Till Dawn (a movie I loved, by the way...hysterical!), but it didn't cash in with his built-in audience. He calmed down and became loveable in One Fine Day, but basically phoned it in. I'm not going to discuss what (or should I say who) made Batman and Robin into an outhouse fishing trip (up yours, Joel Schumacher), but with like only four lines in the entire film, Clooney never got a chance to shine against neon gawdiness and Arnold On The Rocks. The Peacemaker did more to show his tough-guy side, the loner/Eastwood thing. The decisions were never quite wrong, though. I think he was in a set-up mode, passing from role to role like Stockton to Malone.
He went to Elmore Leonard. Leonard has made his bones writing books with quirky characters. They're as much a trademark to him as Holmes and Watson were to Doyle. His characters always had the reality about them, so they seemed strange, but not any stranger than the weirdos you meet every day. Trouble is, nobody could make a decent movie from his books. Nobody could find the spirit. Until Get Shorty. When Barry Sonnenfeld, the twisted Picasso behind The Addams Family and Men in Black got ahold of Get Shorty, he let it dance, revelling in its black humor and satirical sense of Hollywood, and, finally, Leonard worked on film. Instead of fighting the machine, he let the machine work, and it turned out to be a wonderfully entertaining chunk of cinema.
But, could lightning strike twice? Well, it could, if the director knows what he's doing, and the actors are aware of the humor and not forcing the action. And, wonder of wonders, Elmore would be proud, 'cause director Steven Soderbergh (sex, lies, and videotape) has joined up with Big George and the oh-so-saucy Jennifer Lopez to make Out Of Sight. My diagnosis? One of the best things to hit this ho-hum summer.
Clooney plays Jack Foley, a professional bank robber with 200 hits to his credit. He's good. He's efficient, he's methodical, and he can charm a teller so well that she wishes him a nice day as he leaves with his goody bag full. He slips up and lands behind bars, but for Jack it's just another challenge to master. He makes a break for it one night, with his pal Buddy (Ving Rhames). Unfortunately, on the way out, he runs up on Karen Sisco (Lopez), a federal marshall who loves her job as much as Jack does. She loves it so much, she's entranced when her father (Dennis Farina) presents her with a shiny new gun for her birthday.
A brief encounter involving a car trunk. A little cat and mouse, but in short, he lets her go. But now the race is on. Jack's planning his next robbery, and Karen wants to bust him. There's also a strange new ingredient to this chase, though. Seems that there are a few sparks between Jack and Karen. Romeo and Juliet, if you will, with the family issue replaced by the long arm of the law.
What can I say? Soderbergh steers the ship, and the crew goes along like they've sailed with him for years. The entire cast is at the top of their form. Clooney and Lopez are the sexy couple you used to find in old movies, like Grant and Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story and Bringing Up Baby. They smoulder, but with no burn, and that makes their chemistry all the more sexy. And they're supported by some of the best utility infielders in the game. Rhames impresses me more and more each time I see him. He was a standout in an otherwise-cruddy adaptation of Striptease, another great book done wrong. Albert Brooks, well, Albert is a master, whether he's the star or not, he always clicks on all cylinders.
The two, though, that should be seen are Steve Zahn and Don Cheadle. Cheadle plays Jack's old prison enemy, Maurice Miller, nicknamed Snoopy. Miller is a ruthless piece of work, and Cheadle could've played the part like a wildman and gotten away with it, but he doesn't. He takes a page from Rhames's Pulp Fiction role, Marcellus Wallace. (There's rarely been a line spoken with more menace than Rhames quiet promise to "get medieval on" those pawn shop boys.) He downplays, speaking quietly and succinctly, making his points with cool sentences and eye contact. Think of Miller as Wallace's little brother. Same attitude, less carbohydrates. And Zahn, so memorable as Lenny in That Thing You Do! is also a blast to watch. He plays a stoner ex-con forced to work with Miller, and his reactions are worth the ticket price alone.
Thank Soderbergh, though, for catching on. He knows how Leonard plots his books. They may take place in Florida, or Hollywood, or Detroit, but they dwell in the Bizarro World, the alternate universe of Leonard's creation. Every quirk, every detail, every movement...the word is stylized. He's one of the few writers, along with David Mamet and maybe Tarantino, that makes a world that looks absolutely realistic, but, by design, the absurd is accepted and the norm is ignored. This outlook has never quite caught on, and, rather than figure it out, directors have chosen to change it, making for some stank attempts like 52 Pick-Up and, the most horrible of all, Stick. Some of that stigma can be erased now, though, as the suits are learning that quirky works now because the world is just as quirky, and folks now accept it as the norm.
A few faults are forgiven, like the wandering ending that could've been cinched up and some choice editing to quicken the pacing, but these hardly detract from the fact that this thing's a bright spot in a very disappointing summer. It only makes you wonder yet again at what might have been.
Go see Out of Sight. Relax your reality checks and get into the underworld of Elmore Leonard, as seen by Soderbergh, Clooney, Lopez, and the rest of this stellar cast. You won't be sorry. You won't find comets, lizards, or talking animals, but there is something better. A great script, top-drawer talent...and just a dang fine film.
Image copyright Universal Pictures.
|
medical miracle