Out of Sight

Let’s talk about “Out of Sight,” Steven Soderbergh’s criminally underrated 1998 crime caper. This movie is wild because it’s so stylish and cool, yet basically nobody ever puts it at the top of their heist-movie list. If you slept on it, well, you’re in for a treat. Clooney, before ER completely typecast him, plays a bank robber whose quick-witted exchanges with Jennifer Lopez (yes, J. Lo, and yes, she’s really good) make the whole thing sizzle. The plot kicks off when Clooney’s character, Jack Foley, breaks out of jail and ends up literally entangled with J. Lo’s U.S. Marshal. That locked-in-the-trunk scene? Legendary flirtation.

What really jumps out is the tone. Soderbergh manages to make everything feel light and steamy, but not flimsy. You get the sense that danger is always around the corner, yet there’s this breezy attitude with every scene. It feels like Miami heat and Detroit grit, sometimes in the same shot. The movie doesn’t rush—honestly, it might even take its time a bit too much in places—but since the dialogue is clever and the chemistry is off-the-charts, you get a little drunk on the vibe.

Clooney is magnetic in his pre-superstar, post-teen heartthrob phase. He brings the exact right amount of roguish charm, so even when you know he’s kind of a loser—at least compared to more successful crooks—you root for him. Jennifer Lopez, meanwhile, is the real shocker here. She’s sharp, no-nonsense, and nails the mix of competence and vulnerability. You get why she’s intrigued by Foley, but you also believe she could snap the cuffs on him any second. Their cat-and-mouse energy makes the movie so much fun.

The secondary cast is stacked. Ving Rhames, Steve Zahn, Don Cheadle, and even a brief Albert Brooks appearance. Everyone gets just enough to do, and nobody mugs for the camera. Steve Zahn, in particular, brings this anxious goofiness as Foley’s accomplice that never tips over into parody. Even when the script leans on familiar beats—a big score, double crosses, crooks getting in over their head—it feels fresh because the characters don’t behave in cookie-cutter ways.

Soderbergh’s direction is peak 90s cool, without the Try-Hard Tarantino vibe that was so rampant back then. He uses jump cuts and flashbacks, but not in a way that screams “look at me, I can do nonlinear.” The color palette is memorable, with the warm Miami pastels clashing against colder Detroit grays, which telegraphs the shifting tone better than any line of dialogue. Elliot Davis’s cinematography deserves as much credit as the editing. That whole hotel hallway scene? Pure visual storytelling.

The pacing does drag in the middle stretch. There’s a sense that Soderbergh likes hanging out with his characters maybe a bit more than the story demands. The actual heist—the centerpiece—isn’t quite as intricate or suspenseful as it could be. Compared to something like “Ocean’s Eleven,” which Soderbergh would direct a few years later, “Out of Sight” is way less about the crime mechanics and more about the people stuck orbiting each other’s gravity.

For me, the emotional punch comes from the fact that you actually end up rooting for everyone to get away—criminals and Marshals alike. This isn’t a grim, gritty world where hope gets smothered, or a cartoon movie where stakes don’t exist. There’s always just enough danger and heartbreak to make you care, but you don’t leave the movie feeling crushed. The romantic undercurrent dodges corniness, and there’s enough noir around the edges to keep things from being weightless.

“Out of Sight” isn’t perfect, but it’s got a swagger and a sense of fun that most crime movies fumble completely. It’s clever without being smug, sexy without being sleazy, and confident enough to go quiet when it needs to. Sure, the finale understates itself a little, and some of the supporting characters don’t get enough development, but at the end of the day, I’d watch this twice before sitting through another gloomy neo-noir. It’s the best kind of stylish throwback.