Wised Up and Witty

Hollywood has been doing business with Elmore Leonard for decades, and the novelist has quite a store of amusing stories about the unmitigated fiascoes the studios have turned his novels into. Like the time Richard Widmark came up to him on the set of “The Moonshine War” and said, “What’s it like to hear your lines all fouled up?” Only he didn’t exactly say “fouled.”

Those tales, however, have begun to show their age. Recently, in the kind of Hollywood ending reality rarely provides, the movies in general, and screenwriter Scott Frank in particular, have figured Leonard out. A quartet of diverting movies has been made from his books, including Quentin Tarantino’s “Jackie Brown” and Paul Schrader’s “Touch.” Frank, however, has written the best two: First came “Get Shorty,” directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, and now, its engaging and consummately entertaining successor, “Out of Sight.”

Like a benevolent character in a fairy tale, Leonard has been good to those who’ve treated him right. His work is a key inspiration behind Tarantino’s accomplishments; he gave Schrader an unlooked-for sense of humor and boosted Travolta’s career with “Get Shorty.” Similarly, “Out of Sight,” a wised-up, insouciant love story between a deputy U.S. marshal and the veteran bank robber she’s trying to incarcerate, will be a boon to all concerned.

As Jack Foley, whose 200-plus bank robberies place him at the top of the FBI computer, George Clooney is suave and debonair in a role that should silence doubts about his movie star status. And Jennifer Lopez, an actress who can be convincingly tough and devastatingly erotic, uses the part of a law enforcement agent who only gets emotional about her Sig Sauer .38 to solidify her position as a woman you can confidently build a film around.

*

Being helped even more will be director Steven Soderbergh, whose erratic career after “sex, lies, and videotape” has included self-indulgent misadventures like the unwatchable “Schizopolis.” His work in “Out of Sight,” however, turns out to be impeccable. He has brought together the year’s most diverse and exciting supporting cast (Ving Rhames, Don Cheadle, Dennis Farina, Albert Brooks, Nancy Allen, Catherine Keener, Isaiah Washington, Steve Zahn, Luis Guzman, newcomer Keith Loneker and Michael Keaton in an unbilled cameo) and well understands that a level of criminal reality in Leonard is the key to setting up the comedy.

For what makes the novelist irresistible, aside from his unmatched gift for playful language, is his pleasure in finding it in unlikely places. Leonard’s books are Oscar Wilde behind bars, drawing-room comedies set amid the bemused venality of a harsh criminal world. Serious bad guys and almost competent cons crowd his pages as both heroes and villains, and a pleasing combination of tension and humor is one of his trademarks.

Frank has proven himself expert at presenting and framing Leonard’s bemused wackiness on screen. Large chunks of the novelist’s dialogue get the call, but Frank has also adroitly juggled the book’s characters and plot elements and polished a tone that’s more romantic than the book’s elegiac, somewhat bittersweet mood.

After a prologue that shows how he got there, we hook up with Foley in Florida’s medium-security Glades Correctional Institution. With the help of his ex-wife and magician’s assistant Adele (Keener) and pals Buddy and Glenn (Rhames, Zahn) from an earlier incarceration at Lompoc, the shrewd Foley is about to piggyback onto someone else’s escape attempt.

Karen Sisco (Lopez) is up at Glades too, delivering some paperwork. She stumbles on the escape and ends up, in a seriously bizarre movie first date, sharing the trunk of a getaway car with an apologetic Foley, comparing thoughts on movies and life with the unwashed desperado as casually as if they were flirting over a pair of cappuccinos.

*

All first dates have to end, even ones in car trunks, but, cynical as they are, both Foley and Sisco have the odd feeling they’d like to see each other again, something which neither her father (Farina) nor his friend Buddy can quite understand. “Why,” Buddy asks, far from unreasonably, “would you want to have cocktails with a woman who wants to shoot you?”

Making this second date more amusingly difficult to pull off is Sisco’s determination to rearrest Foley and his eagerness to reach Detroit and get to work on a potentially big score involving the homicidal Maurice “Snoopy” Miller (Cheadle) and a wealthy white-collar criminal (a charming Brooks) everyone knows from Lompoc.

As always with the best of Leonard, it’s the journey, not the destination, that counts, and director Soderbergh has let it unfold with dry wit and great skill. Making adroit use of complex flashbacks, freeze frames and other stylistic flourishes, he’s managed to put his personal stamp on the film while staying faithful to the irreplaceable spirit of the original. Both he and Frank have learned the main lesson of Elmore Goes to Hollywood: What becomes a legend most is, quite simply, respect.

* MPAA rating: R, for language and some strong violence. Times guidelines: some violence and a discreet sexual scene.

‘Out of Sight’

George Clooney: Jack Foley

Jennifer Lopez: Karen Sisco

Ving Rhames: Buddy Bragg

Don Cheadle: Maurice Miller

Dennis Farina: Marshall Sisco

Albert Brooks: Richard Ripley

A Jersey Films production, released by Universal Pictures. Director Steven Soderbergh. Producers Danny DeVito, Michael Shamberg, Stacey Sher. Executive producers Barry Sonnenfeld, John Hardy. Screenplay Scott Frank, based on the novel by Elmore Leonard. Cinematographer Elliot Davis. Editor Anne V. Coates. Costumes Betsy Heimann. Music David Holmes. Production design Gary Frutkoff. Art director Phil Messina. Set decorator Maggie Martin. Running time: 2 hours, 1 minute.

*

* In general release throughout Southern California.