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'The Lookout' movie review |
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Written by Robert W. Butler, McClatchy-Tribune
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Wednesday, 28 March 2007 |
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___
THE LOOKOUT
3 stars
Director: Scott Frank
Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Matthew Goode, Jeff Daniels
Rated: R for language, some violence and sexual content.
Running time: 1:39
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Any more it takes a pretty nifty twist to put an edge on the well-worn conventions of the noir crime thriller. Scott Frank provides one with "The Lookout," his directing debut after a career as one of Hollywood's most successful screenwriters.
The scribe behind such hits as "Get Shorty," "Out of Sight" and "Minority Report," Frank knows his way around the crime and suspense genres. But he gives "The Lookout" an added dimension by presenting us with a protagonist going through his own very peculiar form of misery.
Chris Pratt (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) used to be a star athlete and swaggering rich kid in his Kansas City high school. But during his senior year his reckless driving resulted in a crash that killed two of his friends and left Chris with scrambled brains.
Deprived of much of his short-term memory, the young man must refer constantly to a notepad to remind himself to shower, eat and drive to his job as a night janitor at a small-town bank in eastern Kansas. He hopes one day to work his way up to teller, but he's not organized enough to heat a can of spaghetti, much less make change.
All this has taken a toll on his emotions. Chris easily becomes frustrated and angry and has lost the ability to censor himself (he's mortified when he blurts out to his pretty caseworker - played by Carla Gugino - exactly what he'd like to do to her).
At least he has the support of his blind roommate Lewis (a scene-stealing and supremely sardonic Jeff Daniels), who plays older brother to Chris's ADD child.
Frustrated by his handicap and facing a glum future, Chris is an easy mark when approached in a bar by Gary (Matthew Goode). Gary explains that he attended the same high school as Chris and was a big fan of his athletic career. Chris responds to the first praise he's heard in years. Soon Gary's "friendship" extends even to setting Chris up with an unemployed stripper improbably named Luvlee (Isla Fisher), his first sexual experience since the accident.
We're way ahead of Chris in seeing that Gary's motives are less than altruistic. In fact, he heads a gang of robbers who expect Chris to serve as their lookout while they empty the safe at the bank where he works. Apparently Chris's moral compass was broken along with his noggin, because he decides to go along with the scheme rather than lose Luvlee and his new running mates.
This leads to the film's nail-biting piece de resistance, a prolonged robbery sequence that disintegrates in gunfire.
What makes "The Lookout" really memorable is Gordon-Levitt's nuanced portrayal of Chris. Gordon-Levitt, who played the youngest of the aliens on TV's "Third Rock from the Sun," is on a big-screen roll, having recently played a male prostitute in "Mysterious Skin" and the teenage detective in "Brick."
He's got an uncanny knack for slipping into his characters' skins; here he pulls off the difficult trick of making us care for Chris even as the character's behavior pushes us away.
Gordon-Levitt gets great backup both from Daniels, whose blind mentor oozes dark humor, and from Goode, who loses all trace of his English background (he was the brother-in-law in Woody Allen's "Match Point") to play a duplicitous and distinctly American con artist.
In short, "The Lookout" is a solidly satisfying directing debut. | Only registered users can write comments.
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