Steven Soderbergh's adaptation of an Elmore Leonard novel falls compliantly in line with the post-Get Shorty view of the author as a fashion plate of the hip, the flip, the cool, the edgy. The result: a cops-and-robbers game that sacrifices logic and suspense for snigger and swagger. In the process, Soderbergh has been reduced from a distinctive independent filmmaking voice to a Hollywood yes-man. The cast -- once you get past the star of the show, George Clooney, a man so self-amused and self-pleased he can hardly hold still -- is diverse and diverting: Jennifer Lopez, Dennis Farina, Ving Rhames, Don Cheadle, Steve Zahn, Albert Brooks, Nancy Allen, Catherine Keener, and in unbilled cameo roles, Michael Keaton and Samuel L. Jackson. There are certainly some laughs, most consistently from Zahn as a spaghetti-spined hoodlum: "If I wasn't stoned, there is no fucking way you would have talked me into this!" The laughs, however, are never numerous enough or large enough to warrant the amount of effort that went into getting them. (1998) — Duncan Shepherd