In Out Of Sight, Jennifer Lopez and George Clooney made a perfect couple on opposite sides of the law

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[size=40]In Out Of Sight, Jennifer Lopez and George Clooney made a perfect couple on opposite sides of the law


Ignatiy Vishnevetsky
Yesterday 3:00pm
Filed to: WATCH THIS
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Photo: Universal/Getty Images

Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by new releases or premieres, or occasionally our own inscrutable whims. This week, as the galaxy’s most popular smuggler returns to the big screen in Solo: A Star Wars Story, we’re taking a look at some of our favorite movies about charismatic crooks and cons. 

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Out Of Sight (1998)

The con as both art form and personality type is a pet subject of Steven Soderbergh, whose films make a point of showing the similarities between a criminal’s craft and their own—misdirection, practicality, the importance of timing and knowing your tools. Because while Soderbergh may be the American director most fascinated with showmanship and its tricks and façades, his films aren’t really extravagant; their showmanship is like a swindler’s or a magician’s, the confidence that a minimum of angles can make a scene. The comparison to a magic trick—and specifically, the idea that the magic is in the show and not in the magician’s secret—is even worked into Soderbergh’s superb Elmore Leonard adaptation Out Of Sight, through a minor character’s obsession with learning the trick behind that magic-show staple, the woman being sawn in half, and his eventual disappointment in learning that it’s just “fake legs.” But one could also point to bank robbery that Jack Foley (George Clooney) executes at the beginning of the film, and Soderbergh’s minimalist direction of both Foley’s bluff and his arrest outside the bank. Or to the millions’ worth of uncut diamonds at the center of Out Of Sight’s climactic burglary, which look “just like rocks.”


Produced on the heels of the successful Leonard adaptations Get Shorty and Jackie Brown, Out Of Sight has a lot in common with Soderbergh’s subsequent collaborations with Clooney on the Ocean’s movies, in that the values of its filmmaking are identical to those of its plot. The big one is chemistry, obvious in the classic screwball pairing of Foley and U.S. Marshal Karen Sisco (Jennifer Lopez), whom he initially takes hostage while breaking out of a Florida prison—a flirtation that begins in extremely close quarters, with the two squeezed into the trunk of the getaway car driven by Foley’s associate Buddy (Ving Rhames), and then over long distance after she escapes and pursues Foley and Buddy all the way to Detroit. Lopez and Clooney make a terrific screen couple, the tough cop and the softhearted crook with perfectly opposite motivations—she lives to catch, he to escape—that are also the two drivers of a chase plot. The visual storytelling is some of Soderbergh’s most dexterous, aided by the late editor Anne V. Coates, most famous for her work on Lawrence Of Arabia. (Coates’ editing got Out Of Sight one of its two Oscar nominations; the other was for Scott Frank’s clever screenplay.)
Like so many founts of apparently superficial entertainment, Out Of Sightactually has a lot of moving parts, breezing back and forth in time to fill in previously unnoticed blanks in the plot. It’s got a lot of parts in the other sense, too, with one of those great late 1990s ensemble casts: Dennis Farina, Don Cheadle, Catherine Keener, Luis Guzmán, Michael Keaton (reprising his role from Jackie Brown), Albert Brooks, Steve Zahn, a then-unknown Viola Davis. (There are some deep cuts of bit casting, too, like Chameleon Streetdirector Wendell B. Harris Jr. popping in as an FBI agent.) Although conflict is less central to Out Of Sight than in the Ocean’s trilogy, it similarly comes down to treachery versus trickery, with antagonists who represent the antithesis of the movie’s artistry: They are overarmed, greedy, fractious, and don’t know how to take their time. What makes its unlikely love story work is that, like Out Of Sight itself, it’s ultimately about pleasure.

Availability: Out Of Sight is available to rent or buy through all the major streaming sites. It can also be obtained on DVD or Blu-ray from Netflix, Amazon, or possibly your local video store/library.[/size]

Pleasure ..... Sigh

Yes, they were such a great couple on screen, weren't they?

Out Of Sight will be forever one of my favorite Geoge's movies.

One of his best
For me too

George and J.Lo are a beautiful couple: both are sensual, smart, charming, sexy, gorgeous. 
Soderbergh has a way of depicting and showing sensuality on screen that always amazes me: the scenes are never too sexy but they are so elegant and, again, sensual that you can't take your eyes off of the screen. It also helps that he has a great eye and he always chooses magnetic actors and creates great couple. For example: this movie (the scene in the trunk, the scene at the restaurant, the first time they make love), "O11" (every scenes with George and Julia, like when he met Tess at the restaurant, or every scene with Brad and Catherine in "O12"), "Sex, Lies, and Videotape"...

"Out of sight" is a fictional movie.

I'm aware of that.

Doug Ross wrote:I'm aware of that.

I'm going to be completely honest with you Doug Ross.  I watched this movie and could not get pass real life.  I kept thinking to myself RUN GEORGE... RUN...   

As life moved on both JLo and George found love.  I love JLo and A-Rod;  I think they make an awesome couple.  George Clooney married Amal,a father of twins and appears with the twins happier than I've ever seen him.  

It's nice to see how real life has turned out.

Maybe I will re-visit the movie...

I don't think that I'll like George and J.Lo together, if they were a couple in real life. They're just too different to fit. 
But in the movie, they work, at least for me. They make a great, gorgeous couple ON SCREEN.

I agree...

It's interesting that as much as they had such great chemistry on screen, in real life it just wasn't there. Not quite sure why, but I got the impression that off-screen they didn't really like each other very much. Soderbergh did a great job of directing these two.

I think there was also a rumour about them not liking each other.

George has become friends with just about every leading lady he's worked with... except JLo. I think that says something.

Way2Old -About him or her?

Oh, I just meant as evidence contributing to the rumor that they didn't get along.

They did have great chemistry in the movie, though. Makes me wonder if, all these years later, they would find each other more likable on a personal basis.

Rumour has it that she demands two trailers, each decked out in white and one for just make up and prefers people to talk to her staff

I could understand that this would be slightly different from the way George is on a set

Well, remember, at the time of Out of Sight, we were still calling her by her whole name, and she was happy to take whatever trailer a movie producer gave her. So that probably wasn't the reason for their differences.

Besides, George married a woman who probably needs an entire room in each of four houses for her clothes, so...