 The "Unequivocally Reprehensible" Memo There's Something About Dumb Comedy Out of Sight: What a difference a director makes |
 Out of Sight: What a difference I remember a Saturday afternoon in 1981 when my friend (and noted film critic) Kathleen Murphy and I went to a multiplex on the Eastside (of Seattle, that is -- other side of Lake Washington) to catch opening weekend matinees of Clash of the Titans and Raiders of the Lost Ark. With its Ray Harryhausen effects and its zany cast (Harry Hamlin, Burgess Meredith, Ursula Andress, Maggie Smith, Claire Bloom -- and Laurence Olivier as Zeus!), Titans was cheesy fun. But a few minutes into Raiders, Kathleen turned to me and said something like: "It's so good to be in the hands of somebody who knows how to make a real movie." That's the way I felt watching Steven Soderberg's Out of Sight. The movie has a lot of things going for it -- an Elmore Leonard source novel, a nifty screenplay by Scott Frank (who also adapted Leonard's Get Shorty), and a terrific cast, including: George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez, Dennis Farina, Don Cheadle, Ving Rhames, Albert Brooks (didn't even recognize him until his first extended dialog scene), Steve Zahn, Isaiah Washington -- and clever cameos by the likes of Michael Keaton, Nancy Allen, and Samuel L. Jackson. But what I find so impressive and invigorating about the picture is the palpable sense of intelligence behind the camera. That's something I find more thrilling than a thousand explosions. Moment for moment, shot for shot, Soderberg makes such smart, gratifying, economical, and unexpected choices that you realize how dull and -- what's the word? -- insensitive most directorial sensibilities are these days. The night before I saw Out of Sight for the second time, I caught a screening of F. Gary Gray's The Negotiator, which has Samuel L. Jackson, Kevin Spacey, J.T. Walsh and other swell actors behind it -- but is so thuddingly, unimaginatively overdirected that it becomes painful to watch. It's all cut-cut-cut-cut at random, from one mundane camera position to another, for no good reason and to no effect, except to wear you down over a movie that, at 2 hours and 40 minutes, is already too long. (I wondered if the filmmakers or the studio made the error of thinking that because the movie is so long, they'd better keep those shots short, under the mistaken impression that that's a way of "keeping scenes moving." I've heard that one in the editing room before -- but only from editors who didn't know what they were doing.) In contrast, Soderberg's touch is light and playful, effortlessly revealing juicy little pieces of character or exposition in small ways that subtly delight you from beginning to end. Why do I love this movie? Let me count (some of) the ways (oh, and if you haven't seen it -- you should do that before you read any further): The trunk scene. Escaping convict and bank robber Jack Foley (Clooney) and FBI agent Karen Sisco (Lopez) are locked together in the trunk of a getaway car driven by Buddy Bragg (Rhames), who has just helped Foley break out of prison. Jack's covered in grime; Karen's wearing a $900 suit her dad gave her. She's pissed; he's nervous. Soderbergh illuminates the scene with the red glow of the brake lights, and positions his camera as if it were in the back seat, with her in the foreground and him behind her, resting his filthy hand on her thigh -- and her expensive skirt. We can see both their faces; they can't see each other's. They start talking. She makes a snide remark about him fancying himself another Clyde Barrow. He's puzzled for a moment, then the lightbulb goes on in his head: "Bonnie and Clyde." And they go off on a tangent about Faye Dunaway movies -- Network, Three Days of the Condor. She doesn't quite buy the plot twists in the latter; he dumbly misremembers Peter Finch's mantra from the former as, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take any more of your shit!" She smiles, but doesn't correct him. This is pop-culture dialog I can believe; it sounds like people talking, rather than like actors spewing self-conscious Tarantinoisms. Now, I'm sitting there thinking of my favorite movie: Chinatown. But, of course, that's not the sort of movie these two are likely to talk about. And then: Soderberg cuts to an overhead shot, with Karen in profile, her hair swept back, eyebrows arched -- and I realize it's the shot of Faye Dunaway and Jack Nicholson in bed from Chinatown! The reference is subtle, unforced -- you don't even have to catch it to know what's going on. Because the important thing is that you feel these two are being photographed as (unlikely) lovers. And, just as in Chinatown, part of the scene's subtext is that she's beginning to fall for him... Incidentally: The red glow of the brake lights reminded me of one of my all-time favorite love scenes -- from Robert Towne's Personal Best -- in which Mariel Hemingway and Patrice Donnelly lay in front of a sporadically glowing space heater. The feminine bathtub fantasy. During the getaway, Buddy makes a sarcastic comment about Jack's desire to take Karen back to Buddy's apartment while he gets cleaned up, so he can be more properly introduced to her. Buddy can't believe that Jack thinks taking a bath and putting on aftershave is going to make any difference. But then, when they do get back to Buddy's place (albeit without Karen), there's a langorous scene in which Jack gets undressed and slides into the tub. Meanwhile, we see Karen sneaking up on them, coming down the hallway, entering the apartment, then the bathroom, with her gun drawn. Suddenly, Jack's hand reaches up and grabs her gun. He pulls her down for a kiss, and she joins him in the tub... And then she wakes up. In the hospital. There are so many wonderful things about this sequence. First of all, you hardly ever see a woman's sexual fantasy on the screen -- and so you're really not expecting this one. But there still are indications that something is a little off: the way Jack looks at himself in the mirror a little too closely as he pulls off his t-shirt (no straight American male would do it this theatrically); the floral (or is it seashell?) pattern of the bathroom floor, which doesn't look like a floor Buddy would have in his place (although the bits we see of the rest of the apartment do indeed turn out to be as Karen fantasizes them); and, perhaps most tellingly of all, the single lit candle that's placed next to the tub -- all these things indicate Karen's feminine sensibility at work rather than Jack's. And, of course, in place of the classic post-Psycho male fantasy of a woman in the shower (with its phallic nozzle), there's a man soaking in a warm, womb-like bath. But the real payoff is Karen's face when she awakens -- she seems just as surprised (and subtly amused) as we are to realize she's been having this dream about Jack Foley! The obligatory sex scene. You know it has to happen. They know it has to happen. (Jack and Karen, that is.) It's a given. Jack astonishes her in the trunk by suggesting that if they'd only met under different circumstances -- like in a bar, over a drink -- things might have worked out better. She rebuffs him, but you can tell she's kind of charmed by his näivete. So, days later and many miles North (from Florida to Detroit), Karen sits down in a hotel bar, orders a bourbon, and waits. Outside the window, snowflakes fall, catching the light and glistening in the dark. From Karen's point of view, we here the muffled -- but all too clear -- voices of three smarmy out-of-town salesmen at the bar, who are imbibing the liquid courage it will take one of them to approach her. Two of them do, one after the other, and she shoots 'em down politely but firmly. (Marvelously icky detail: the tag-team "high-five" the first guy gives to the second one as the former returns to the bar and the latter makes his move...) Jack does indeed show up. And as they engage in what they, and we, know is verbal foreplay, Soderberg cuts forward in time to the culmination of their mutual seduction (which climaxes in a "dare you" strip-tease game just before they hop into the sack). Every time we cut to the hotel room, all ambient sound is cut, as if the scene were taking place in a vacuum. Only David Holmes' gently pulsating organ and bass remains constant. This, of course, reminds me of another of the best sex scenes in the history of movies: the one between Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie in Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now, where the married couple's passionate/painful lovemaking is intercut with their post-coital preparations as they dress for dinner. Soderberg knows one of the key secrets of savvy filmmaking: !f you're gonna "borrow," "borrow" from the best. There's another splendid moment afterwards, when Karen gets out of bed, puts on a robe, goes into the bathroom, and looks at herself in the mirror. Then she stands in the bathroom doorway and looks at Jack, asleep face-down in bed. Suddenly, he starts awake, looks at her through groggy eyes -- and instantly knows that the entire emotional landscape of the room has shifted dramatically while he's been snoozing. "Why are you angry?" he asks, before she can say a word. And you can feel that weight in the pit of your stomach as you look into her eyes. (Or, at least, most of the men in the audience can...) Some other wonderful touches:
... and so on... NEXT: The Truman Show: Jim Carrey's new clothes
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