Lucky for us there are no ordinary circumstances in this smart, tasty adaptation of the Elmore Leonard novel and it gets quirkier, funnier and sexier as it goes.

In some ways Soderbergh does a much better job than Tarantino. He handles the time shifts more adroitly, always keeping us on track; he goes easy on the violence, and when he does unleash it, it's short, fast and ugly.

One other element helps Out of Sight tremendously: the editing. [3 Aug 1998]

[Soderbergh] plays with time and narrative to reveal character, mood and longing in ways you just don't find in a mainstream crime picture.

This isn't a profound film, or even an important one, but then it isn't trying to be. It's so diverting and so full of small satisfying pleasures, you don't realize how good it is until it's over.

Reveals Soderbergh in peak form, as he endows Leonard's postmodern yarn with a meticulously detailed mise en scene that helps each member of his terrific ensemble soar.

The film's sleek moodiness and visual sophistication are so effective that there's even a scene here that makes Detroit look like the most romantic city in the world.

The audience responds to Out of Sight the way Jack and Karen do to each other. Instantly we like the way it looks, moves, and sounds. Ultimately we like how it makes us feel.

Engaging and consummately entertaining.

What makes this movie work is the kind of cool that made Get Shorty go so nicely: an understanding that life's little adventures rarely come in neat three-act packages, the way most movies now do, and the unruffled presentation of outrageously twisted dialogue, characters and situations as if they were the most natural things in the world.

Jack is just one of a dozen enormously appealing personalities in Out of Sight.

Soderbergh contrives the perfect voice for Leonard's prose--laid-back and grooving when it needs to be, but also taut, with the eerie foreboding of violence about to erupt.

Works both as a great romance and a great, unconventional crime thriller. But step back from such distinctions, and it just looks like a great movie.

Everything in Out of Sight is smart -- the dialogue, the characters, and the storyline.