How halftime sheds light on the secrets of Jennifer Lopez’s success

Fresh from her belated wedding to Ben Affleck (in a subdued, perfectly Vegas rom-com worthy ceremony, no less) on July 16, and days shy of her 52^n/a birthday on July 24 — a fact almost incomprehensible to ordinary human beings who are actually looking their age — Jennifer Lopez seems to be living her best life these days.

His Netflix documentary half time—a catch-all chronicle of his 2020 Super Bowl halftime performance, his film awards campaign Hustlers, and the path she’s taken to earning these extraordinary opportunities — premiered last month to rave reviews, and suggested that Lopez pursue more projects than ever that she truly loves, both personally and professionally. July also marks the 4K release of Steven Soderbergh Out of sightfeaturing one of his best performances, a welcome reminder that Lopez has always been a better actor than people — and maybe even Lopez herself — credit him with.

Nominated eight times for the Golden Raspberry Awards (not including a “Razzie Redeemer Award”), but just twice for the Golden Globes, and never for an Oscar, it’s easy to confuse some of the films she appeared in with what she brings them. But since her days as a backup dancer in Janet Jackson’s “That’s The Way Love Goes” music video, Lopez has stolen stages, movies and hearts with her tenacity and versatility. These qualities are sometimes overshadowed by his ambition and visibility; and yet, based on Lopez’s statements, it’s almost understandable that one doesn’t fully see — or at least underestimate — what she’s accomplished in her career.

In half time Lopez reveals something surprising and crucial about her work, or at least how she sees it. Describing her role in Lorene Scafaria Hustlers, where she played Ramona, the hardworking mastermind behind a network of strippers, Lopez observed, “It was the first role where there was no hidden part of myself.” As a fan, the question you can’t help but answer is: How can this be true?

It’s an interesting statement from someone whose dedication and hard work is clearly evident in everything she does, although of course making an effort and showing vulnerability are not the same thing. But as someone who matters Out of sight Among her all-time favorite movies — her romantic chemistry works due to the dogged persistence and unwavering vulnerability Lopez delivers when dealing with George Clooney — her quote almost seems to belittle how good she’s been on so many occasions. And it happens to be my favorite of his films; The cell, Shall we dance?, U-turn and of course, Selenaamong many others, all have avid fans, due to his tremendous work in all of them.

Kino Lorber’s 4K version offers a timely excuse – ahem, an opportunity – to revisit Out of sight. It was Soderbergh’s mainstream breakthrough and the first film where George Clooney, as career bank robber Jack Foley, stopped squirming during performances like a bobblehead on a car’s dashboard (a fact that Clooney himself acknowledges in the commentary track). But it’s Lopez’s performance as U.S. Marshal Karen Sisco that provides the emotional connection between the project’s commercial leaning (as an adaptation of Elmore Leonard after Get Shorty and Jackie Brownand post-pulp Fiction hump for tales of colourful, talkative scofflaws) and its enduring warmth as a sophisticated, decidedly adult love story.

The performances are unilaterally excellent, making it an easy movie to love. But from the first scene with Karen, where her doting dad Marshall (Dennis Farina) happily gifts her a sidearm for her birthday, it’s clear that Lopez can hold her own against an array of titans — some protagonists, some veteran actors. Scott Frank’s storyline clearly shows her strength and intelligence, such as when she instinctively reacts to the prison break that places her and Jack in the trunk of the car where their mutual attraction first sparks, as well as in his tireless ability to outsmart Steve Zahn’s Glenn Michaels. . Lopez makes Karen’s choices reflective enough, even effortlessly, for a famous career police officer who will not be diminished or sidelined by anyone. But it also conveys the more important and more difficult quality of being powerless over something, or rather someone, that Karen should know better than to get involved with.

That Soderbergh makes Clooney look like a particularly enticing forbidden fruit — in one dream sequence, she catches him soaking in a bathtub rather than the other way around, as you might traditionally expect — certainly provides a lot of fuel to Lopez to start Karen’s fire. But she’s a driven and dedicated career woman who shot one of the men she previously dated. Lopez captures the complexity of the character’s resistance to making a similar mistake again, and her story of finding herself in the romantic crosshairs of a man she knows may not be good for her.

Her ability to pivot between these extremes, often within the same scene, makes Karen and Jack’s developing relationship immensely powerful, especially during the centerpiece sequence leading up to when they consummate their attraction. After fearlessly – and again, effortlessly – gunning down a trio of trade-show shit trying to buy her a drink, Karen adopts with Jack exactly the kind of coltish naivety these would-be suitors hoped to exploit, briefly accomplishing a desperate hope their case has not been complicated by the reality of their situation. Lopez does it again after a sex scene that manages to be extremely sexy in its frozen modesty. It both feels too chaste for the tension she and Clooney have generated thus far, but also possesses an anachronistic side, appropriate to the film’s references to Three days of the Condor and other flag bearers from the 70s.

As Karen is forced to decide whether or not to shoot Jack during the robbery of Ripley’s house, you hear the desperation in her voice that she doesn’t want to make that choice, especially after compromising what the characters thought was her integrity in falling in love with him in the first place. Lopez is absolutely fascinating, and she makes you forget that the story seemed to belong to Clooney’s character at first, especially because she’s the one you see last in the movie, outwitting Jack, the cops who take him back to jail, and maybe even herself.

It’s just one role in a career spanning more than 30 years. But one could dig into a number of his other performances for similar highlights, whether or not they generated the same attention or acclaim. (angel eyesfor example, may not be a great movie, but she’s great in it as a very different police officer than in Out of sight.) And so the question that remains is whether Lopez really didn’t give herself to these other roles like she did for Hustlersto really hide no part of herself, or if she’s just so good that these qualities come out of her performances more than she realizes.

Jennifer Lopez certainly deserves more recognition than she sometimes gets, but when someone works as hard as she does for so long, sometimes it’s easier to see the hard work than the result, even for the person who spend it. However, with half time and the skillfully self-aware rom-com Marry me earlier this year, she continues to display examples of her diverse talent. Meanwhile, the awards season recognition she received for Hustlers specifically highlights how outstanding she was in the Scafaria project, but it is hoped that the powers that be – and herself – will more easily recognize in the future that being outstanding is not exceptional in the context of a career as accomplished as his.