1998 in Review: "Out of Sight"

Pay no attention to the sex god behind the camera

Hollywood has forgotten how to insinuate. For years, it was all they could do. The Hays Code, instituted in 1934 and named for the former postmaster general who was hired by the studios to enforce it, kept explicit portrayals or even clear references to sex offscreen (as well as violence, immoral attitudes, “miscegenation” and “ridicule of religion”). As a response, Hollywood got creative. They implied sex, rather than showing it or talking about it directly. They used witty cutaways, like the final shot of North by Northwest. They gave viewers the feeling of sex through snappy, innuendo-laden repartee, like in Double Indemnity. In the late ‘60s, Hollywood stopped insinuating and started just showing the stuff we weren’t previously allowed to see, but these days we have swung back in the other direction. Most mainstream films these days are pathologically inclined towards the youngest common denominator, forcing adult moviegoers to dig a little deeper to find life on screen in all its messy, sticky glory.

All of which makes Out of Sight both a throwback and a nod to our future.

Released in June of 1998, it’s one of those old-fashioned romance pictures that throws two movie stars into the frame and lets them create some friction. The twist was that neither one in Out of Sight was a bonafide star yet. Instead, we had George Clooney, a TV icon who had yet to have an actual hit movie, and Jennifer Lopez, in only her second starring role after the success of 1997’s Selena. Anyone paying attention knew that these two were destined for major stardom. They just needed the right vehicle.

Director Steven Soderbergh also needed a hit badly. After essentially launching the independent film boom of the ‘90s with 1989’s sex, lies, and videotape, the wunderkind struggled to find his voice in the following years and was anxious about his future in the business. Out of Sight, based on an Elmore Leonard novel, showed Hollywood what he (and Clooney and Lopez) could do. Soderbergh employs a dazzling array of filmmaking techniques to accentuate the film’s central romance, while his stars forge that increasingly rare thing: palpable romantic chemistry between two actors we could not have imagined together.

Clooney does that thing where he becomes a star during the movie. As Jack Foley, he starts out in the film clever and charismatic—in the opening scene, he robs a bank armed only with his charm—but he’s also covered in dirt after a prison break and later seen wearing a Hawaiian shirt and goofy hat while posing as a tourist. Not exactly a great look. Right at the end of the second act, he cleans himself up, puts on a killer suit, and arrives to meet Lopez at a hotel bar looking like a million dollars. This, finally, is the Clooney we would soon see in Ocean’s Eleven, Up in the Air, a bunch of other movies, and, of course, at the Oscars. 

Lopez is less convincing as Karen Sisco, FBI agent—her toughness is often referenced in the film and rarely seen—but she is still plenty compelling as a love interest, and her chemistry with Clooney, so crucial to the film’s success, is off the charts. In their first scene together, Jack has kidnapped Karen (understandable, she caught him trying to escape from prison), and has her pinned down in the trunk of a car driven by his friend Buddy (Ving Rhames). They’re spooning, essentially. His hand rests gently on her hip, which Soderbergh wisely lingers on. The brake lights cast a cherry glow. It’s such a strong insinuation of postcoital bliss that we suspend record-high amounts of disbelief. Let’s be honest: It’s impossible for an FBI agent to fall in love with a grimy con who has just broken out of prison and taken her hostage just because they like the same movies. But we believe it.

Soderbergh uses a different trick to the same end in that hotel bar, when Jack and Karen finally have their “time-out.” Karen has come to Detroit to try to stop Jack from pulling off his one last heist, or maybe just catch him herself and ensure he doesn’t get hurt. Or possibly to get laid. Jack tracks her down in that hotel bar, and they share a drink and talk. While they flirt, Soderbergh cuts back and forth between the bar and their hotel room later, where they undress, kiss, and fall into bed. It has an intoxicating effect, replicating the thrilling, chaotic energy of a mutual seduction without ever showing the act itself. It’s sexy without being sexual. Will Hays would have been so proud. 

Out of Sight even insinuates its violence, keeping its most brutal acts—like when Glenn (Steve Zahn) is forced to kill a low-level drug dealer to prove his worth to Snoopy (Don Cheadle)—just offscreen. To be clear, there was no one preventing Soderbergh from shocking viewers with violence. The Hays Code was long over, and by 1998, shocking bursts of violence were de rigueur in American independent film, while the erotic thriller boom of the ‘80s and early ‘90s normalized explicit sex on screen. Soderbergh didn’t elide the naughty parts of his story because he had to. Out of Sight garnered an R rating, anyway. A little more naughtiness wouldn’t have changed things. Instead, Soderbergh rightly observed that sex and violence was no longer titillating to audiences by 1998, and if you wanted to make a film about sex and violence feel fresh, withholding them was the cooler option.

Filmmaking is all about choices, and Soderbergh’s perspective is revealed by what he elides and what he holds on to. Consider his use of freeze-frame. He employs it whenever Jack and Karen are together, but it feels extra poignant during their love scene at the hotel. When their hands touch, or when they’re on the verge of a kiss, Soderbergh freezes the action for just a moment—like a lightning bolt that stops the world from turning—before continuing on with the scene. It stops the action only for a second, barely long enough to notice, implying a realized wish for his star-crossed lovers to hold back the unstoppable march of time. Jack and Karen (or maybe Soderbergh himself) want to savor these moments, but the world won’t let them. The freeze frame, on the surface a cute auteurist touch, actually expresses a deep yearning to make love last forever.

In this way, Out of Sight is Soderbergh film far more than a Clooney or Lopez film. He’s the one shaping and guiding these moments, using the tools of cinema in ways few filmmakers had before—or at least not since 1934—to evoke sex, love, and violence. He knows what his audience wants, when to give it to them, and when to hold it back. He beckons, nibbles, he licks, he withdraws. It’s a bit strange to say this, but in a movie that stars George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez arguably at the peak of their hotness, the sexiest person in Out of Sight might be the bald, nerdy cinephile behind the camera.

Next in 1998 in Review: TBD