There are few things I hate more than seeing a movie turned into a television show, especially a movie that I regard as one of my all-time favorites. They did it first by trying to turn Curtis Hanson's brilliant L.A. Confidential into an hour-long show for HBO, which probably wouldn't have been entirely bad, but now they've taken the Jennifer Lopez character from Out of Sight and put her on network television.

As I sit here in my office writing this week's column, there's a poster for Steven Soderbergh's 1998 crime-caper plastered on the wall. Based on this information, one could correctly surmise that Out of Sight is a film I really enjoy quite a bit and have seen nearly a dozen times. I don't know what it is, but there's something about it that just works for me when it comes to the combination of George Clooney as a suave bank robber and Lopez as an FBI agent with a contradictory taste in men. Add in a little chemistry, some Elmore Leonard dialogue, a great soundtrack, and the screen presence of Don Cheadle, and to me this is what the movies are all about.

The film also marks the beginning of Clooney and Soderbergh working together - a ray of hope against the big studios and the boring by-the-numbers shit they continue to produce. The duo has since formed Section 8 films, which in its first year brought us both Insomnia and Far From Heaven and continues to favor the director's vision over test-screening results. I attribute this entire relationship and all that comes from it to one little gem of a film.

Anyway, back to my point, why the hell do they have to go and ruin it by making it into some T.V. show? If you want to do a show about a tough female cop, by all means go for it, but there's no need to drag a good movie into the mix. Who knows, from what I hear the show starring Spy Kid's Carla Gugino may actually be worth watching. I don't care - it still pisses me off. The one thing I will say on its behalf is that it features the vastly under-used Robert Forster, whose career failed to take off like it should have after his Oscar-nominated performance in Jackie Brown.

Posted September 10, 2003 | link