Out of Sight (15) General release
Scriptwriter Scott Franks adapted Elmore Leonard's Get Shorty for director Barry Sonnenfeld and producer Danny DeVito a couple of years ago with highly entertaining results, and he repeats the exercise with the same pair on another Leonard novel, the jailbreak tale Out of Sight. This time, Sonnenfeld acts as executive producer, with Steven Soderbergh directing, but the resulting movie is just as good as - if not better than - its predecessor. Less of an out-and-out comedy than Get Shorty, Out of Sight is still extremely funny at times, as well as being a cleverly constructed, beautifully made crime-caper movie and a rather sexy love story. It marks a massive return to form for Soderbergh, who has had some difficulty emulating the success of his breakthrough debut, sex, lies and videotape.
George Clooney plays an habitual (but never violent) bank robber Jack Foley, incarcerated for the umpteenth time in a Florida penitentiary but determined not to stay there too long. With the help of his old pal on the outside (Ving Rhames), Clooney manages to effect his escape from the jail, only to run into federal marshal Karen Sisco (Jennifer Lopez). The encounter between the two kicks off the movie's central dynamic, as she chases him across America, from steamy Florida to chilly Detroit, where Clooney is planning that holy grail of all caper movies, the last big heist.
Told in an intricate but elegant structure of overlapping flashbacks, in Soderbergh's hands Out of Sight flips between jail and freedom, cops and robbers, good guys and bad guys with the confidence and fluidity of a director sure of his material and enjoying his job.
The impressive ensemble cast is clearly enjoying itself, and the dialogue is a pure joy. Winks along the way to other Elmore Leonard adaptations - Michael Keaton appears (uncredited) at one point in essentially the same role he took in Jackie Brown - only serve to remind us this is the best of the lot. Clooney's big-screen career has been patchy up until now, but he's perfectly cast here, as is Lopez, and the two together make for great on-screen chemistry.
With Irish DJ David Holmes's terrific score and soundtrack blending 1970s funk with contemporary beats, Out of Sight oozes style, sex appeal and humour. There hasn't been a better thriller this year.
The Negotiator (15) General release
Speaking with Michael Dwyer at his public interview in the IFC last week, Kevin Spacey told the audience his latest movie, The Negotiator, had begun life as a proposed Sylvester Stallone vehicle. The script apparently underwent some appropriate alterations before finally emerging in its present form, with Spacey and Samuel L. Jackson in the leading roles, but you can still see signs of the kind of cheesy, me-and-my-machinegun-against-the-world pot boiler audiences expect from the Italian Stallion.
That's not to say The Negotiator is terrible - it's not, and F. Gary Gray's direction is very slick and confident. It's just that, in a week when Out of Sight shows what can be done with the modern thriller, this is ultimately just another competent, not particularly imaginative piece of product.
Although they get equal billing, this is really Jackson's show (Spacey doesn't appear for the first half-hour), as he plays an expert police hostage negotiator whose world suddenly starts falling apart when he finds himself accused of murdering a close friend and colleague. Soon, he's being charged with embezzlement as well, and becomes sure he's the subject of a conspiracy originating somewhere within the police force itself. What would a hostage negotiator do in such a situation? One doesn't want to give anything away, but let's just say you don't have to be an expert in the art of the high-concept Hollywood script to figure it out.
Perhaps the most serious flaw in the set-up (and this can probably be traced to the script's Stallone origins) is that we're never given the chance even to contemplate the possibility Jackson might be guilty - surely a lost opportunity if you're casting one of the most entertainingly ambiguous movie stars around at the moment in your lead role. Thus, after starting well, the film soon develops a remorseless predictability. We know who the good guys are, we have a very good idea who the bad guys are, and the only thing to distract us is Gray's pyrotechnical choreography, which is pretty to look at but not nearly enough to sustain The Negotiator's unnecessarily long two hours and 20 minutes.
For Richer or Poorer (12s) General release
Tim Allen and Kirstie Alley are a wealthy couple forced to flee New York due to tax troubles in this feeble romantic farce, which barely raises a smile, let alone a giggle. Finding themselves penniless and bedraggled in rural Pennsylvania, the pair, united more by mutual loathing than anything else, decide to masquerade as an Amish couple come to stay with their distant cousins. Once ensconced on the family farm, they come to see the error of their ways, of course, and learn to love each other again, but anyone with any sense will have gone home long before that inevitable and unconvincing denouement.
More Witless than Witness, this charmless farrago should be avoided at all costs, and director Bryan Spicer, whose most significant previous credit was for Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, should try to stick to plastic superheroes.
