Road Dogs

Seems Elmore Leonard has his mojo back. The last few have been a bit disappointing. Not terrible, but far from “Out of Sight” or “Be Cool.” Finally in “Road Dogs,” we’ve got fun and interesting characters in a plot with a few twists.

Jack Foley returns, and it’s impossible to read his dialog without hearing George Clooney’s voice. And all the dialog is snappy, even well-worn bits like when the crooked (and gay) bookkeeper goes to confession for the first time in 27 years.

  ”You keep company with women?”
  ”Not to speak of. Though in the past year I have been more with women than before. I thought to myself, well, as a new experience it wasn’t so bad.”
   “Up to this time you’ve been chaste?”
   “You mean, Father, by dudes? If I like the guy he don’t have to chase me.”

And later on,

   “You confess your sins? Tell the priest everything you been doing?”
   “Everything.”
   “Some sins he never heard of before?”
   “Nothing outrageous.”
   “What do you do for penance, flagellate yourself?”
   “Don’t be disgusting.”

And so on. J-Lo — I mean, Karen Cisco — makes a brief appearance, and you can almost line up the rest of main characters against their present-day Hollywood counterparts.

All in all a really good time is had by all. Well, not everyone. Some of them wind up quite dead. But I won’t give it away.