Now comes restitution. Clooney, dark and tall, husky without being heavy, is teamed with Jennifer Lopez, luscious, cool, with snappy comic timing, possibly more limited than Pfeiffer but no less sexy. They have a supporting c ast that is punching all the way and a director who knows how to do what needs to be done. Clooney plays a bank robber who, at the start, perpetrates a clever bank robbery in Florida, except that the getaway car stalls. Subsequently he escapes.
Complications follow, criminal and romantic.
The doings are helped in different ways by Ving Rhames as Clooney's pal and collaborator, Don Cheadle as a felonious serpent, Steve Zahn as a tremulous druggie, and Albert Brooks as a multimillionaire jailbird in the clink for insider trading. The camera work by Elliott Davis is so good that it's intrusive. Much of the time when we're alone with Lopez and Clooney we feel we really oughtn't to be watching but are glad we're there. What a relief after all those sex scenes where we feel we're bein g forced to watch. The glow of intimacy, along with the other glows and glints along the way, initially derives from the skill of Stephen Soderbergh, the director.