Elmore Leonard started out as a Western novelist, but soon discovered a knack for suspense thrillers and crime fiction. Many of these—and several of his short stories—were turned into feature films or TV movies, and in a couple of cases they became TV series.
In this episode we’re looking at two of the better examples of films based on Leonard’s novels. First we’re watching Jackie Brown (1997) directed by Quentin Tarantino and starring Pam Grier. Jackie Brown is based on his 1992 novel Rum Punch. There are a bunch of actors in this film who you may think at first are badly miscast, but as you settle in you discover just how right they were for the parts they’re playing.
After that we move on to Out of Sight (1998), directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez. It’s based on his 1996 novel of the same name.
In both cases we get to appreciate the deft comic spin that Leonard puts on his characters even as they’re talking about things that are deadly serious, to them at least. This is a long episode but there isn’t much wasted time in it.
COMING ATTRACTIONS:
In our next episode we’re going to check out a pair of films that feature Robert DiNiro and Al Pacino together. First up is 1995’s Heat, in which they don’t share a lot of screen time (though it’s more than they shared in The Godfather Part II), but what they do have is amazing. Then we jump to 2019 and The Irishman, a film backed by Netflix and which, as of this post, is still available only on that platform.