Cinema-Scene.com > Volume 6 > Number 06 |
Director: Starring: Release: 30 Jan. 04
|
The Big Bounce BY: DAVID PERRY
As if the atrocious television spin-off of Out of Sight
wasn’t enough to put an end to the deification of Elmore Leonard as a cool
auteur-du-jour, The Big Bounce may do the deed. I happen to like Leonard’s
smooth as a daiquiri style in fiction, and have rejoiced in what some
filmmakers have done with it -- most notable Barry Sonnenfeld with Get
Shorty, Steven Soderbergh with Out of Sight, and Quentin Tarantino with
Jackie Brown -- but I always worried that, in the wrong hands, these books
could be turned into artistic doomsday devices: caper films with wise guys
who have nothing to say and settings that only facilitate their presence.
Where a good director would cherish the chance to cultivate Elmore’s
underlying edge, an indolent one would treat the adaptation as lazily as the
characters in the book. |
|
©2004, David Perry, Cinema-Scene.com, 6 February 2004 |