Noir November: Out Of Sight (1998)

George Clooney has a lot to thank Steven Soderbergh for. The two have had a successful working relationship for some years now, but Out Of Sight seems to be where it all began. Adapting the novel by Elmore Leonard, it really feels like this film had the benefit of great timing. Any closer to the releases of Pulp Fiction and Get Shorty and this could have been lost among the tidal wave of imitators that came along. Any later and it might have all felt irrelevant. At the very least, the full cast might not have been available, and this is a movie that gets some major brownie points thanks to the casting.

Clooney is Jack Foley, a bank robber who can do more with his brains and charm than many others could do with guns and violence. But it's not so easy being a career criminal when you're currently behind bars. When he finds out about a potential big score, one that won't wait around forever, he engineers a prison break. The bad news is that he breaks out of the prison just as U.S. Marshall Karen Sisco (Jennifer Lopez) pulls up in her car. Jack then has to take her hostage, the two of them stuck in the boot of a car while his main accomplice (Buddy, played by Ving Rhames) drives them to a safe spot. The good news is that the two seem to immediately feel something between them. But will it be enough to make Sisco forget her duty as a Marshall?

Scott Frank takes the source material and transfers it all to the screen in a way that nicely balances out the humour and violence, while never once losing a single drop of cool. Soderbergh helps, obviously, with his filming style, shot choices (kudos to editor Anne V. Coates), and the brilliant decision to let David Holmes create an appropriate score, mixed with some classic choices (Dean Martin, The Isley Brothers, and Herbie Hancock all make an appearance - well, not an "appearance" but you know what I mean).

Clooney and Lopez are both fantastic, generating the kind of heat between them that seems to emanate off the screen in waves. Okay, so the former can make that happen with many a co-star, but let's not take anything away from a real highlight in the career of Lopez. She's sexy, strong (apart from her bad choice in men), and feels very much like an equal to her male co-star. Rhames is a constant delight as Buddy, a criminal who always has to confess his misdeeds to his sister, Don Cheadle is suitably menacing as the kind of criminal Foley and Buddy would never want to work with, and Steve Zahn is very funny as a hapless crook who thinks he can run with the big boys. There's also some great support from Dennis Farina (playing Sisco's father), Albert Brooks (the mark), Michael Keaton (revisiting the character he played in Jackie Brown), Luis Guzman, Isaiah Washington, Catherine Keener, Nancy Allen, and Samuel L. Jackson.

Funky, funny, and pretty damn sexy too, Out Of Sight occupies a space nicely in between the two other Leonard adaptations mentioned here. It's neither as funny as Get Short, nor as rich in characterisation as Tarantino's film, but it mixes those two main ingredients together to create an end result that easily ranks alongside those movies.

9/10

http://www.amazon.com/Out-Sight-Collectors-George-Clooney/dp/0783229402/ref=sr_1_2?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1416847022&sr=1-2&keywords=out+of+sight

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Noir November: Thief (1981)

It's the classic premise. The career criminal about to step away from his life of crime as he's about to reach his main goal, yet he's held back from doing so by someone who knows just how good he is at his job. In this instance, James Caan is the titular thief, Robert Prosky is the awkward guy who wants Caan to keep realising his potential (for the sake of them both), and Michael Mann is the director making a great impression with his usual blend of cool style and attention to detail.

From the opening scenes, this is a film interested in showing you the lifestyle of a thief as a proper career. It's not just a film that gives you a main character and just enough of a sketch to believe in how he lives his life, it IS his life.

Whether he's on the job, confronting someone who owes him money, delivering some choice moments from his personal history to a woman he wants to develop a relationship with, Caan is never less than perfect in the role, one that remains his best ever. And the finale of the film, the last ten minutes alone . . . . . . . . . . . well, I won't spoil anything for those still to experience the movie, but they're absolutely in line with the character, making everything equally brilliant and heartbreaking. Prosky is an avuncular figure, until revealing his true colours, and he's fantastic in portraying the full range of the character, with those hooded eyes making even his more charming moments hold a certain sinister undercurrent. Tuesday Weld is the woman who Caan wants in his life, and she's very much his equal in terms of how up and down the journey through life has been. James Belushi puts in a sweet performance, as the young assistant who helps Caan get results. He may not be onscreen for very long, but he does well. And then there's Willie Nelson, popping up for mere minutes to show how loyal Caan is with the few that he decides to love and protect.

Based on a book by Frank Hohimer ("The Home Invaders"), Mann has taken the lifestyle, the tools of the trade, the focus needed by the main character, and created a screenplay that distils everything into a near-perfect, tense experience. The fact that he also supplies Caan with one of the greatest cinematic speeches since Shaw told two fellas about his time on the USS Indianapolis is nothing to be sniffed at either. I can only assume it's often forgotten by film fans collating greatest movie moments because it happens to take place in a diner, and Mann eventually gave people THAT diner scene from Heat, meaning that his own success has cast a large shadow over his back-catalogue.

As he has shown throughout most of his career, Mann knows how to do a crime film. The fact that it's great will be no surprise to anyone who has ever enjoyed his work. The fact that it's SO great, as his first feature, is the surprising part, making you realise that all of his more recent, and celebrated, outings have just been trying to maintain that high standard that he set himself straight out of the blocks.

A film to watch, own, and watch again. I'm sure I will get even more out of it when I have time to give it a rewatch.

9/10

http://www.amazon.com/Thief-Criterion-Collection-Blu-ray-DVD/dp/B00GBT62PQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1413745811&sr=1-1&keywords=thief

Reindeer Games AKA Deception (2000)

Ben Affleck stars in this twisty turny action thriller directed by John Frankenheimer and written by Ehren Kruger and it's not as bad as you may have heard. It's not as good, or clever, as it thinks it is but it's a mildly entertaining way to spend two hours and benefits from the presence of the gorgeous Charlize Theron being absolutely gorgeous.

The plot is as follows: Ben Affleck plays Rudy Duncan, a man imprisoned for stealing cars who is about to get his freedom. His cellmate (Nick Cassidy, played by James Frain) is also near the end of his term, five years. Nick has been developed a relationship with a woman who has been writing to him in prison and is looking forward to getting out and meeting her. But as the day of freedom approaches, tragedy strikes. When Rudy leaves the prison he sees the lady of letters (Ashley, played by Charlize Theron) waiting. After a few moments of wrestling with his conscience, Rudy jumps off the bus and runs over to her. He then introduces himself as Nick. What follows seems too good to be true. Rudy is happy, he's in the arms of a beautiful woman who wants to look after him and the only problem is the fact that he lied about his identity. That problem soon becomes pretty major when the happiness is spoiled when Ashley's brother (Gary Sinise) and his gang crash the party. They are planning to rob a casino and they know that they now have the man who can help them. At least, that's what they think. If Rudy comes clean then he's worthless to them and will end up dead but if he tries to keep up the pretence his options aren't looking as good that way either.

Starting with a bunch of dead Santas and then moving back in time, this is a movie that you know isn't necessarily going to end well for most of the people involved. Seeing that Gary Sinise has a gang that includes Danny Trejo, Clarence Williams III and Donal Logue reaffirms that notion. Yet, strangely, it never feels that tense and that's possibly due to the main role going to Ben Affleck.

Here's the thing, I am no Affleck hater (I'm about the one guy who enjoyed Daredevil, as flawed as it was, and I am happy to see him doing so well in his directorial career) but he just doesn't make this role work. He never seems worried, he's not all that convincing and he walks through the movie with that Teflon coating of a star that won't be unexpectedly killed off. I'm not going to spoil the film by telling you if that remains true by the very end of the movie but it certainly kills off the tension for the first 3/4 anyway. Thankfully, the rest of the cast includes those already mentioned (and did I remind you of how gorgeous Charlize Theron is?) and a delightful supporting role for the great Dennis Farina.

The direction by Frankenheimer is solid although with the film running at just over two hours you can't help thinking that a little pruning here and there might have helped. A better script from Kruger would have also helped. It's not THAT bad but it just doesn't hit the sweet spot required. The surprises aren't as surprising as they should be and the lines that are supposed to be cool sound like they were written by someone pretending to be Shane Black as opposed to, y'know, Shane Black. It's a shame that Kruger appears to have peaked so early in his career and has never come close to writing something approaching his work on the superb Arlington Road.

Thankfully, the performances carry this movie along for the duration. Affleck may not be great here but he's okay, which doesn't matter when time is given over to the great supporting actors anyway. Charlize Theron once said that this was her least favourite of all her movies but I think she was too harsh. It's not essential viewing but it has some nice touches, a bunch of great actors and a chance to bask in the glow of the gorgeousness of Charlize Theron (which you might recall me mentioning just two paragraphs above).

6/10

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