Week of March 28, 2007, Issue #597
FILM
Lookout finds importance of being earnest in crime-doesn't-pay drama
JONATHAN BUSCH / jonathan@vueweekly.com
Don’t listen to Jackie Brown, Daniel Ocean or Thomas Crown; crime doesn’t pay, nor is it an excuse for sexy camerawork. It’s a game for fools with bruised souls who don’t understand that life is a journey over which we have no control. It’s never too late to turn back either, because the truth will always be waiting.
Scott Frank writes and directs Joseph Gordon-Levitt (the androgynous teen alien from TV rerun syndicate Third Rock from the Sun) in The Lookout, a male bank heist weepie that counteracts our misguided instinctive flair for guns and green paper. Somehow it stays afloat, while staying remarkably unambiguous about its lesson.
Gordon-Levitt is Chris Pratt, once an aspiring hockey player who, after a MADD-style demonstration car accident, must trudge his way through life with a serious brain injury that stalls his ability to count money and find the can opener. Between visiting the site of the accident and hanging out with his seemingly clairvoyant blind roommate (Jeff Daniels), he spends his nights cleaning a rural bank.
One night, a couple of bad dudes and sexy girls befriend Chris, only to reveal their interest in involving him in a late-night robbery of his workplace; he agrees, merely because the world appears like a wasteland of lost hopes and neon crucifixes.
The Lookout is to juvenile open-custody movie nights as Bob Carlisle’s “Butterfly Kisses” is to father-daughter dances at summer weddings in Alberta; it’s that easy to imagine the screenwriter’s earnest pitch. But that’s not to say that cinematic violence isn’t put to entertaining use; it’s just few and far between, while character and redemptive storytelling fills the remainder.
My fondest memory of Gordon-Levitt is his early 1990’s stint on Roseanne as DJ’s boring school chum, George; he slumps around the Connor household with an adorable hung-dog look that speaks for his cryptic, well-conceived interior. More recently, he’s put these skills to use as an underdog extraordinaire, portraying quiet thugs and misfits in Manic, Brick and Mysterious Skin.
As Chris, he plays the variation on a common theme like a second skin. He coasts toward each subtle outburst with an intentional dullness that channels Sal Mineo; for me, that’s a treat.
Meanwhile the supporting characters are hit-and-miss, and it’s really your call. Daniels is a little smug in his uncanny ability to appear blind, but provides a unique hostage in the suspenseful climax. Matthew Goode as the gang leader is at times both menacing and arrogant, while his accomplice Bone (Greg Dunham) might have you guessing what the guy from Rush is up to these days. But make sure you arrive early, otherwise you might miss the smouldering Carla Gugino as Chris’s case worker, in what’s either a cameo or just a really small role.
The Lookout is definitely on the upside of being ok; I’m just too proud to be fanatic about something so moralistic. But with the current forecast for cinematic violence being so goddamn excessive as it appears in the trailer for Grindhouse, a modest dose of fingerwagging is certainly welcome. V
Opens Fri, Mar 30
The Lookout
Written & directed by Scott Frank
Starring Jospeh Gordon-Levitt,
Jeff Daniels, Isla Fisher