Sightlines · reception
How Out of Sight was received
1998 · Steven Soderbergh · Out of Sight on Sightlines
The arc
A box-office disappointment in summer 1998 despite glowing reviews — but the National Society of Film Critics named it the year's best film, and it's since been canonized as the movie that saved Soderbergh's career and minted Clooney as a real movie star.
What’s debated
The eternal fan debate: is this or Jackie Brown the greatest Elmore Leonard adaptation — and was this peak Jennifer Lopez, never matched since?
Its footprint
The trunk scene — Clooney and Lopez crammed together in red light, flirting mid-kidnapping — is endlessly cited as one of the sexiest scenes in modern movies, and the film's freeze-frames and time-shuffled cool became a Soderbergh signature; it even spun off the Karen Sisco TV series.
Where it stands
A flop-to-classic Letterboxd darling — the consensus 'actually Soderbergh's best' pick and a 'you must have seen this' for anyone getting into 90s crime cinema.
Did you know? Michael Keaton plays FBI agent Ray Nicolette — the exact same character he played a year earlier in Tarantino's Jackie Brown — uncredited, making the two Elmore Leonard adaptations an unofficial shared universe.
Named by the director
- Don't Look Now (1973) — Soderbergh acknowledged the famous intercut hotel seduction scene was modeled on Nicolas Roeg's love-scene editing in Don't Look Now.