On "Out of Sight" by Elmore Leonard *****

My favorite film based on an Elmore Leonard book, at least among those I've seen, is this one--perhaps, in part, because it was directed by Steven Soderberg. The film takes liberty with the order in which the story is presented and works really well as a result (this is one film where the previews did it a great disservice: it looked like a slick and ridiculous movie to me, but good reviews and Soderberg's name compelled me to see it after all, and I was happy to have done so). I am glad also now to have read the book, these many years later, even if it's hard not to picture George Clooney in the role of Jack Foley. The book, unlike the movie, is a straight chronological tale.

There are a few things not to like about the novel even so. One is a complaint I'd have about most all of Leonard's work. That is that the story in the end doesn't emotionally resonate. Leonard tells a good tale, but one never gets too close to any of the characters that one actually ends up crying. That said, some of the characters are least likeable, most especially Foley, such that one does wish him well. He's a man who made bad choices in life and now feels he has no choice but to continue down the same road, even though he wishes he could do something else.

The other issue is that I don't really buy the relationship that is forged between the bank robber Foley and the U.S. Marshall Karen Sisco. Two conversations and a few hours of time are certainly enough to make one fall madly for some other person; it is possible. But even so, it's hard for me quite to figure that either of them would risk as much as they do for each other based on a couple of encounters, Sisco's penchant for falling for crooks, as she has in the past, notwithstanding.

Still, Foley is the real soul of this story to me, a guy who seems to have a good heart but who doesn't feel he can make better choices, who in essence has a kind of death wish and a desire to be someone else and somewhere else. Given a "chance" to break out of prison, he takes it, claiming that he'd rather die than ever go back. Once out, it's back to robbing banks (he's very good at it, having done something like two hundred heists), but he finds himself dragged into something much more sinister by the ex-cons with whom he associates.