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I really hope that Steven Soderbergh is joking about his impending Hollywood retirement. Does he really want to leave off his under-recognized fantastic filmography with the male stripper Showgirls-looking redo Magic Mike and the made-for-HBO Liberace biopic? I hope not. But knowing Soderbergh’s eclectic tastes, I’m sure those movies will (hopefully) be better than their IMDb loglines. This weekend, Soderbergh unleashes the revenge action-thriller Haywire on theaters. An unusually mainstream period for the usually artsy director (although not apples-to-apples, Contagion more than doubled the gross of his last four films combined), I decided to look back at Soderbergh’s first mainstream film after an early career that consisted mostly of films that played in under 100 theaters. His studio break, like Haywire, came in the form a semi-action film – Out of Sight.

Soerbergh is quoted as having directed Out of Sight, an adaptation of a novel by Elmore Leonard, as a conscious effort to break out of the arthouse film world (which he did successfully with the one-two-three $100 million+ punch of Erin Brockovich, Traffic, and Ocean’s Eleven). One of my favorite authors, Leonard’s darkly humorous stories are often troublesomely translated to the screen. For every Jackie Brown, there is a Big Bounce, Killshot, or Be Cool. However, thanks to Soderbergh’s expert pacing and composition (as well as Scott Frank’s sharp screenplay and perfect casting), Out of Sight is less of a Touch than a Get Shorty as far as Leonard adaptations are concerned.

As to be expected from Soderbergh, Out of Sight does not fall into any typical genre. Light enough to be a comedy, intense enough to be a drama, thrilling enough to be an action movie, and sexy enough to be a romance flick, Out of Sight effortlessly dances through the different tones with finesse. George Clooney stars as career thief Jack Foley. Suave like his Ocean’s character (among many other collaborations he does with Soderbergh) but more dangerous, it isn’t hard to see why he so easily wins over the heart of the romantically-challenged U.S. Federal Marshall Karen Sisco (Jennifer Lopez) in a trunk of a car during a jailbreak gone awry.

Scott Frank wisely time jumps with his screenplay, avoiding a lengthy and boring exposition, substituting efficiency. The plot eventually builds into a diamond heist, with Foley looking for one last big pay day before retiring from a life of crime with Sisco on his tail (although we are not sure if she wants to throw him behind bars or into her bedroom). The story jumps locations, too, from the yellow-tinted hot and sunny Miami to the heavy shades of blue Soderbergh’s lens captures in the cold and snowy Detroit.

With a laundry list of a cast, Ving Rhames, Don Cheadle, and Steve Zahn are the highlighted supporting characters. Rhames is self-righteous although he can’t help but blab about his seedy misdeeds to his sister. Cheadle is brilliantly “gangsta” in an over-the-top hilarious performance that is both comical and menacing. Meanwhile, Zahn brings the most blatant laughs as an unreliable stoner accomplice to Foley.

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