Out of Sight

 

Director Steven Soderbergh

Soderbergh with Jennifer Lopez

George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez

OUT OF SIGHT         A-                                                                                                             USA  (123 mi)  1998  d: Steven Soderbergh     

I'm just gonna sit here, take it easy and wait for you to screw up.                                                   —Karen Sisco (Jennifer Lopez)

This foursome of films from 1998 to 2000, OUT OF SIGHT (1998), The Limey (1999), ERIN BROCKOVICH (2000), and Traffic (2000) represent Soderbergh working at the peak of his creative powers.  This is one of his finest efforts, named Entertainment Weekly’s Sexiest Movie Ever (50 Sexiest Movies Ever - Nick Kaufmann - LiveJournal) in a 2008 poll, a smooth, sophisticated and very sexy Hollywood thriller that features early performances in the budding careers of George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez, not yet stars, yet both sizzling onscreen and romantically involved in the most unorthodox fashion, as he is the handsome and charming Jack Foley, a career bank robber incarcerated at Glades Penitentiary in Florida, while she is Karen Sisco, a smooth-as-ice, intoxicatingly beautiful FBI Federal Marshal.  They meet while locked in the trunk of a getaway car as she’s kidnapped during a prison breakout when he is covered with mud, where the two have time on their hands to chat with one another and break the ice, actually discovering they have a mutual interest in classic Hollywood movies, talking about Faye Dunaway movies of all things, including the bad end of the otherwise likeable Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Clooney misstating the famous line from Network (1976), also wondering whether Robert Redford hooked up romantically with Dunaway a little too easily in THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR (1975), while he continues to stroke her thighs, “But in a nice way,” he insists.  Capturing the best of his directorial ideas, with an emphasis on stylish editing, sound, camerawork, frame compositions, and color, while still managing to maintain an independent director’s control over his films, Soderbergh has imported into Hollywood some of the formal preoccupations of experimental filmmaking, such as challenges to character identification and narrative structure, where his visionary style and his habit of playing with the timeline of events gave a new impetus to American cinema, though this inexplicably didn’t do well at the box office.  Adapted by screenwriter Scott Frank from a 1996 Elmore Leonard crime novel, best known for character-driven stories, the ongoing dialogue is exquisite, exuding razor-sharp wit, making excellent use of secondary roles, so much so that the directors could just as easily have been the smart-mouthed and wise-assed Coen Brothers, who perfectly recaptured Clooney’s acerbic criminal persona a few years later in O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), while also generating a short-lived TV series appropriately named Karen Sisco, starring Carla Gugino as Sisco.  Casting is one of the more imaginative aspects of the film, as character development through the introduction of new faces continues to surprise the viewer from the first to the last shot, including Catherine Keener as Adele Delisi, Foley’s eccentric ex-wife, also brief appearances by Michael Keaton as FBI agent Ray Nicolette (Sisco’s husband) reprising his role in Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown (1997), while lifelong criminal Samuel L. Jackson from that film also plays a similar role, beautifully photographed by Elliot Davis, typically using a handheld camera, featuring interior hotel scenes with a warm and memorable glow, and a jazzy score by Irish composer David Holmes.  Despite the passage of time, this film has lost none of its sophisticated elegance and charm.    

Seemingly brought together by fate, Foley, with a dubious reputation of more than 200 bank robberies while never using a weapon, fortuitously acknowledges the moment, “It’s like seeing someone for the first time, like you can be passing on the street, and you look at each other for a few seconds, and there’s this kind of a recognition like you both know something.  Next moment the person’s gone, and it’s too late to do anything about it.  And you always remember it because it was there, and you let it go, and you think to yourself, ‘What if I had stopped?  What if I had said something?’  What if, what if... it may only happen a few times in your life.”  Or maybe just once, she adds.  While the relationship is the pulsating heart of the film, like a throwback to the golden age of Bogart and Bacall, both displaying the self-assurance and sexiness that makes them naturally irresistible both to each other and to audiences, there is a novelistic structure onscreen, with more than enough subplots involving a host of vividly drawn characters.  Foley and Sisco don’t really acknowledge their interest in one another, yet in their minds they do, and in an oddly embarrassing moment where neither one is supposed to be where they are, he gives her a short little wave from an elevator as she’s sitting in a hotel lobby, eyes fixed on his before he disappears from view with his fellow partner in crime, Buddy Bragg (Ving Rhames), who helped break him out of prison.  While Foley exercises the buddy system, working professionally in public, or being surrounded by hordes of prison inmates, or ex-cons once he escapes, it’s as if he’s never alone and one wonders if he’s capable of private, reflective thought.  Lopez, on the other hand, sexy and determined, has a smart-mouthed, over-protective, yet adoring father, a now retired marshal (Dennis Farina) who worries about his daughter’s dating habits and thoughtfully gives her a gun for her birthday, but for the most part she exhibits a loner policy, as she doesn’t trust the current misogyny and system of male favoritism in place that represents the state of mind in the ranks of the FBI.  So she’s used to going her own way and taking care of herself, irrespective of what they may think of her.  When she goes looking for a career criminal named Maurice (Don Cheadle), aka Snoopy, a murderous ex-prizefighter, but instead finds Mosella (Viola Davis) as his embittered, long forgotten wife, Sisco does a number on Maurice’s brother, Kenneth (Isaiah Washington), an over-controlling serial rapist and male thug, who instantly senses a hot-blooded woman with a taste for violence, exhibiting a sensual lust for getting down and dirty on the floor with her, so she zaps him with a collapsible baton that leaves him otherwise immobile, saying “You wanted to tussle.  We tussled,” as she calmly walks out the door unscathed.

Following another Elmore Leonard novel brought to the screen, Barry Sonnenfeld’s GET SHORTY (1995), both adapted by Scott Frank and produced by Danny DeVito, this is a collective mosaic of genre pieces from past decades, including shootouts, a jewelry robbery, and prison breaks, full of zooms, jump cuts, flashbacks, flash-forwards, close-ups, freeze frames, and grainy images, as if to remind viewers we are watching a movie, with a heated romance at the center, bathed in the warmth of a retro design, with a deep respect for the classical forms, where much of the beauty of this film is the dazzling interplay between characters, which in the world of criminals is all about exuding an air of confidence, refusing to be defeated or brought down by anybody.  Oddly enough, this is also the same method for initiating romance, which is beautifully done here, one of the highlights of the film, a clever mix of image and dialogue and music, preceded by Sisco sitting alone in a near empty hotel bar being hit on by a bunch of out of town male imbeciles before Foley walks in and they have a serious conversation, where their thoughts jump ahead out of sequence and we see what they are about to do before they actually do it, a co-mingling of the sexual imagination and the real, gorgeously understated, memorably jazzy and intoxicating.  Fascinated by his carefree behavior, in the mold of Clark Gable, even their post-coital conversation has an air of authenticity not shared anywhere else in the film, where Sisco is allowed to have doubts creep in, and Foley, of course, ever vigilant, puts her mind at ease.  They call this little interlude a “timeout” before they resume back to their normal lives, where Foley and Maurice are in competition for finding the big score, the teaser in all film noirs, which in this case is the robbery of $5 million dollars worth of uncut diamonds hidden somewhere in the giant estate of fellow white collar criminal Ripley (Albert Brooks), a Wall Street billionaire who did time in Lompoc for insider trading, where he met Maurice, amusingly paying his accounts in prison by checkbook.  While the first half of the film is set in sunny Miami with those south Florida vibrant colors, where there is a perceived lack of real menace, the second half moves to Detroit in winter, viewed as a dangerous, oppressive place, rendered in darker tones, dominated by nighttime scenes in tightly enclosed spaces.  It’s a snowy night in Detroit filled with sinister possibilities where anything can happen, with an elevated level of suspense galvanized by the unfocused impulses of sadistic black criminal gangsters, yet the film is really about the sexual swagger of Karen Cisco, one badass woman who’s sitting on the outside waiting to bust them.  Generally regarded as one of the most overlooked gems of the 90’s, the film is smart, tense, stylish, well-directed, character driven, atmospheric, and moves at a fast clip, like a screwball comedy, beautifully edited by legendary British editor Anne V. Coates, but the believable chemistry between the unconventional connection between Clooney and Lopez makes all the difference.   

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The Forest for the Trees (2005)

Judi Bari

 

Judi Bari with Darryl Cherney

April 1990 death threat photo

Bari with attorney Dennis Cunningham

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE FOREST FOR THE TREES           A-                                                                            USA  (53 mi)  2005  d: Bernadine Mellis                     The Judi Bari Website 

Or – a portrait of a hard core social activist in America, and how they have been targeted by bigoted zealots from the other side throughout history, requiring specialized legal teams who are among the few who fight the unpopular fight exposing the unlawful conduct of the American criminal justice system that harasses, fabricates evidence, and ultimately frames these activists when their views are seen as a threat.  While this filmmaker, expanding on an earlier short film submitted as her Master's thesis from Temple University in 2004, narrates her own film about her legendary civil rights attorney father, Dennis Cunningham, he in turn paints a poignant, at times chilling portrait of Earth First! environmental activist Judi Bari, paying her his ultimate respect by defending Ms. Bari in the face of FBI charges that she was a terrorist, instead calling her one of the strongest moral leaders he’s ever met.  Cunningham built his career defending the Black Panthers, bringing a civil suit on behalf of Fred Hampton, a Panther leader who was shot to death by Chicago police, The Murder of Fred Hampton (1971), ultimately winning a $1.85 million dollar award for Hampton’s family, as well as representing the Weathermen and the Attica prison inmates.  A well-balanced piece showing both the side of the activists as well as the logging industry, Bari was actually mending fences with irate loggers who advocated revenge against her radical demonstration tactics, calling to their attention that the fight wasn’t against workers, but the owners of giant timber conglomerates who had already cut down 97% of the old growth redwoods in northern California, who were now targeting the remaining 3% for extinction.  Nonetheless, she received death threats and her car was rammed by a logging truck.  But on May 24, 1990, a car bomb exploded under the driver’s seat of a car Bari was driving, suffering crippling injuries which damaged her legs and pelvic bones, but she and fellow activist Darryl Cherney survived the blast, which led the Oakland police and the FBI to charge her with the crime, labeling her a terrorist, claiming she was responsible for carrying the bomb.

Incredulously, the FBI charges were brought by Richard Held, who led the secret FBI COINTELPRO (COINTELPRO [Counterintelligence Program] (1956-1976) •) tactics to undermine the Black Panthers, smearing the organization, planting false stories in the press, abusing the legal system to harass as many members as they could, conducting break-ins, assaults, and even assassinations, conduct that might be termed a form of official terrorism against its enemies.  But who guards the nation when the nation’s justice system itself is conducting its own illicit campaign to wipe out its enemies?  COINTELPRO remained secret until a burglary into an FBI office in 1971 exposed top secret files targeting such notable lawful activists as Martin Luther King, boxer Muhammad Ali, and actress Jean Seberg.  Twenty years later, despite documented death threats against her life, the police charged Bari for a crime that was ultimately dismissed for lack of evidence, which led her to bring a civil suit for false arrest, charging the Oakland police and the FBI with conspiracy, claiming it was a ploy to discredit her and the Earth First! organization.  A month before the bombing, Bari learned that the FBI’s lead bomb expert had conducted a “bomb school” for police officers on the property of Louisiana-Pacific Lumber Company.  The police never looked for any other bomber, despite evidence to the contrary.  Based on stalling tactics, the case never came to trial for twelve years, 5 years after Bari herself succumbed to breast cancer, but not before she provided a video taped deposition for Cunningham, which was played in court.  A chillingly intense film, one of the better observed studies of the aftereffects of the repressive social climate from the 60’s, where freedom was literally under siege from law enforcement officials, the body charged with protecting the lives of the citizens.  In 2002, a jury found that the Oakland police department and the FBI blatantly lied about the case and awarded $4.4 million in damages, successfully clearing their names.

Paul Wolf, principal author of the report COINTELPRO The Untold American Story, COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story, said of the Bari case:

Despite its carefully contrived image as the nation’s premier crime-fighting agency, the FBI has always functioned primarily as America’s political police.  This role has included not only the collection of intelligence on the activities of political dissidents and groups, but also counterintelligence operations to thwart those activities.... There is no better example than the Judi Bari case to show that the FBI kept on well into the 1990’s using covert action tactics against political movements and activists which they perceived as threats to the established order.... In spite of knowing full well from their own expert’s testimony that Bari and Cherney were innocent victims, the FBI and Oakland police continued to lie to the media ... saying they had plenty of evidence they were the bombers.

What is most compelling in this film is the ragtag group of lawyers who would sit around in a circle and discuss arguments and legal tactics, none of which is shrouded in dense analytic legalese, but which is downright folksy which anyone could understand, where Cunningham comes off as a latter day Jimmy Stewart, politely dissuading certain arguments for lack of legal grounds, but never raising his temper, always allowing everyone a voice at the table, including J. Tony Serra from the old Panther defense team, Bob Bloom who scoured the FBI documents on the case, paralegal Alicia Littletree, and Judi Bari’s daughter, who wanted to rectify her mother’s legacy from a terrorist who killed herself with her own bomb to a socially conscious activist who took the moral high ground and was instead targeted for assassination.  Cunningham comes off as a quiet, self-effacing guy who doesn’t believe he’s suited for the job, who’d rather tinker in his back yard with junk metal building odd-shaped art sculptures than spend his time in the pressure cooker of this courtroom, usually grumpy and downright morose with his daughter who films him after the day’s proceedings in the car.  While cameras were not allowed in the courtroom, there is an eloquent use of a tape recorder capturing some of Cunningham’s final argument, which is a wonderment to behold, as it discredits the authorities by summarily praising the goodness and moral character of the person charged, who he then describes as not just part of the moral fabric of being an American, but one of the special few among us who has the courage to stand up for something, an act which by itself is likely to ruffle a few feathers, but doesn’t deserve the smearing of her name, the overt fabrication of evidence, or her murder to shut her up.  Amusingly, the police objected to the jury’s request for copies of the 1st and 4th Amendments to the Constitution, claiming they might be construed the wrong way.  Cunningham’s exasperated reflections about how we have the best legal system in the world, guided by a Declaration of Independence, a Constitution and a Bill of Rights, but also a worrisome government that at times refuses to follow them, are priceless.