Given Steven Soderbergh’s popular projects ‒ the Ocean’s Eleven movies (2001, 2004, 2007), Erin Brockovich (2000) and, going further back, Sex, Lies and Videotape (1989) ‒ I guess I’m a little surprised Out of Sight did not make it into more people’s queues. It’s a proper heist movie (based on the Elmore Leonard novel of the same name) starring George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez, Ving Rhames and Don Cheadle, with excellent supporting performances by Luis Guzman (Cheadle’s conjoined acting twin), Albert Brooks, Dennis Farina (one of my favorite working actors), Steve Zahn and a swell cameo from Michael Keaton.
Mssr. Soderbergh is a player/manager (back in the day, some baseball managers also played). He seems to be most comfortable with a steadicam in his hands, inserting himself on the viewer’s behalf into the scene in a way that few directors do. This investment pays dividends in lots of his movies, but Out of Sight is dense with these…moments. A particular sequence with Lopez and Clooney in a Detroit highrise hotel kills me every time it’s so beautiful. It’s the most candid, vulnerable thing I’ve seen captured on film. In the words of one of my favorite authors Neal Stephenson, it leaves me feeling “naked and weak and brave.”
Soderbergh has demonstrated that he can make commercially successful movies more or less at will and he has ready access to Hollywood’s top shelf. My hope is that he will use this platform to continue taking risks on less mainstream fare. As with Out of Sight, when he nails it he nails it hard.