Information about Out Of Sight

For the James Brown song see Out of Sight (song). "Out of Sight" is also the title of the fifth movement of Mike Oldfield's Guitars album.

Out of Sight
Theatrical poster
Directed by	Steven Soderbergh
Produced by	Danny DeVito Barry Sonnenfeld
Written by	Elmore Leonard (novel) Scott Frank (screenplay)
Starring	George Clooney Jennifer Lopez Ving Rhames Don Cheadle Steve Zahn Albert Brooks Dennis Farina Isaiah Washington
Music by	David Holmes
Cinematography	Elliot Davis
Editing by	Anne V. Coates
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release date(s)	June 26, 1998
Running time	123 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$48,000,000 (estimated)
Preceded by	Jackie Brown (cameos)
Followed by	Karen Sisco (series)
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Out of Sight is a 1998 Academy Award-nominated movie directed by Steven Soderbergh and based on the novel of the same name by Elmore Leonard. It was the first of several collaborations between Soderbergh and star George Clooney. The film was released on June 26, 1998.

This film is regarded as Soderbergh's comeback movie after several critically acclaimed but financially disappointing films. It was nominated for two Academy Awards (adapted screenplay and editing). It won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for best screenplay and the National Society of Film Critics awards for best film, screenplay, and director. A modest success in its theatrical release, it led to a spinoff TV series, Karen Sisco, and has achieved a cult following.

Plot

The story revolves around the relationship between a career bank robber, Jack Foley (George Clooney), and a U.S. Marshal, Karen Sisco (Jennifer Lopez). They are forced to share her car trunk during Foley's escape from a Florida prison. After he completes his getaway, Sisco chases Foley while he and his friends - his right-hand man, Buddy (Ving Rhames) and Glenn (Steve Zahn) - work their way north to Bloomfield Hills, a wealthy northern suburb of Detroit. There they plan to pay a visit to shady businessman Ripley (Albert Brooks), who foolishly bragged to them years before about a diamond stash at his mansion. But a vicious criminal (Don Cheadle) who also spent time in jail with Jack and Ripley, is planning on hitting up Ripley's mansion with his crew as well. The question of whether Sisco is really pursuing Foley to arrest him or for love adds to "the fun" Foley claims they are having.

Cast and characters

• George Clooney - Jack Foley
• Jennifer Lopez - Karen Sisco
• Ving Rhames - Buddy Bragg
• Steve Zahn - Glenn Michaels
• Don Cheadle - Maurice Miller
• Albert Brooks - Richard Ripley
• Dennis Farina - Marshall Sisco
• Luis Guzmán - Chino
• Isaiah Washington - Kenneth
• Catherine Keener - Adele

Production

The source novel's origins lie in a picture Leonard saw in the Detroit News of a beautiful young female federal marshal standing in front of a Miami courthouse with a shotgun resting on her hip. Producer Danny DeVito bought the rights to the book after his success with the 1995 film adaptation of Leonard's novel Get Shorty.

Steven Soderbergh had made two films for Universal Pictures when executive Casey Silver offered him Out of Sight with George Clooney attached. However, the filmmaker was close to making another project and hesitated to commit. Silver told him, "These things aren't going to line up very often, you should pay attention."^[1]

Sandra Bullock was originally considered to play Karen Sisco opposite Clooney, however, Soderbergh said, "What happened was I spent some time with [Clooney and Bullock] - and they actually did have a great chemistry. But it was for the wrong movie. They really should do a movie together, but it was not Elmore Leonard energy."^[2] Danny DeVito and Garry Shandling were considered for the part of Ripley before Albert Brooks was cast.

The appeal of a character like Foley to Clooney was that growing up his heroes were bankrobbers in the movies, "the Cagneys and the Bogarts, Steve McQueen and all those guys, the guys who were kind of bad and you still rooted for them. And when I read this, I thought, This guy is robbing a bank but you really want him to get away with it."^[3]

Soderbergh cites Nicolas Roeg's 1972 film, Don't Look Now as the primary influence on how he approached the love scene between Foley and Sisco: "What I wanted to create in our movie was the intimacy of that, the juxtaposition of these two contrasting things...We had to mix it up and have you feel like you were more in their heads."^[2]

Reception

In recent years, Soderbergh sees the film as "a very conscious decision on my part to try and climb my way out of the arthouse ghetto which can be as much of a trap as making blockbuster films. And I was very aware that at that point in my career, half the business was off limits to me."^[4] Clooney said, "Out of Sight was the first time where I had a say, and it was the first good screenplay that I'd read where I just went, 'That's it.' And even though it didn't do really well box office-wise - we sort of tanked again - it was a really good film."^[4]

Trivia

• This is the first of many collaborations between George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh, who later directed Clooney in the Ocean's Eleven trilogy, a remake of Solaris and The Good German. Clooney and Soderbergh are the co-founders of Section Eight Productions, which produced Good Night and Good Luck and Full Frontal among many other films.
• Michael Keaton played the same character, ATF Agent Ray Nicolette, the previous year in "Jackie Brown", Quentin Tarantino's adaptation of another Elmore Leonard novel Rum Punch. Although he is with the FBI in this film, they make reference to the fact that he recently transferred. Samuel L. Jackson was also in both films.

References

External links

• Out of Sight at Rotten Tomatoes

•  • [ e] Films by Steven Soderbergh

sex, lies, and videotape (1989) • Kafka (1991) • King of the Hill (1993) • Underneath (1995) • Gray's Anatomy (1996) • Schizopolis (1996) • Out of Sight (1998) • The Limey (1999) • Erin Brockovich (2000) • Traffic (2000) • Ocean's Eleven (2001) • Full Frontal (2002) • Solaris (2002) • Eros (Equilibrium) (2004) • Ocean's Twelve (2004) • Bubble (2006) • The Good German (2006) • Ocean's Thirteen (2007) • Guerrilla (2008)