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The Lookout

Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jeff Daniels, Matthew Goode, Isla Fisher, Carla Gugino, Bruce McGill, Alex Borstein, Sergio Di Zio

Directed by: Scott Frank

Mirimax - Official Site of the Movie

With The Lookout, screenwriter Scott Frank takes his first shot at directing in a story about a man living with a huge mistake. Frank, best known for his brilliant script for Out of Sight, (Soderbergh’s best movie in my opinion) injects The Lookout with the same combination of cool, crime, violence, sex, money, broken heroes, loveable villains, and irresistible woman. The result is the first movie of the year that noir nerds can geek out over with no shame at all. What did we have before this? The Cleaner?

The script, originally conceived with and intended for director David Fincher, follows the life of Chris Pratt (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a popular jock who gets into a car accident that leaves him with a serious head injury. The injury, which affects his memory and emotions, requires Pratt to follow routines and write down reminders so that he’ll stay on track and not erupt in anger. He’s a star trapped in a loser’s body and he longs to get his old life back. A face from the past shows up offering friendship, fun, and a beautiful redhead. It’s just what the doctor ordered.

In time Pratt learns that these new so-called-friends have befriended him in hopes that he will help them rob the bank that he works at. They need an inside man, they need a lookout. And he doesn’t know it yet, but they might need someone to take the blame.

The leader of the would-be bank robbers is played by Matthew Goode who enters the movie threatening to play the role with all the subtlety and poise of the most deformed and bejeweled Bond villain. His entrance features him as a shadowed figure berating his lackeys for mocking the enemy as he slowly sucks the breath of life off an inhaler. I instantly had fears of him being this clichéd madman, a cartoon in the real world, but Goode ends up bringing a lot of charm, depth and mystery to the role. He’s the kind of guy you would want to hang out with, and he needs to be because if we don’t fall for his act, then why should our hero?

With a close cropped cut and constant scruff Goode is completely unrecognizable from the clean shaven ladies man he’s portrayed in films like Chasing Liberty and Match Point for Woody Allen. The fact that he was able to disappear so effortlessly behind the look, lifestyle and accent of an American lowlife sings praises of the skills this young actor is just starting to show us. I can’t wait to see what he does next.

He has a constant air of mystery around him and even as the film closes some answers to the details of his character never truly come into focus. One of the foggiest of them is the true nature of the relationship Goode shares with Luvlee (Isla Fisher), the woman whose advances keep Pratt coming back to the wrong side of the tracks. Was she put up to this seduction by her boyfriend, her pimp, her dealer…? In the end it doesn’t matter, but the questions raised by the subtleties of these performances are part of the reason you’ll be interested and invested all the way through.

Luvlee is a gorgeous and divine far beyond the misspelling of her stripper name implies. She’s the type of girl that is good at heart but doesn’t quite catch on to what’s happening around her until it’s a little too late. And as the only real temptation Pratt has to deal with you can see why he was so eager to be so bad. Their relationship is believable but left unfinished and undefined like the most heartbreaking and memorable romances of our real lives. For all her faults and for whatever role she may have played in drawing Pratt in, you can’t help but love Luvlee. If only for her innocent naiveté and the way she rocks those jeans. Your leading lady being able to rock a pair of pants is obviously important but in all seriousness, Fisher shows a great deal of skill navigating between grasping the truth and playing dumb. When she faces off against Jeff Daniels in a late night confrontation, you wince as she innocently accepts his satirical attack, and applaud her when she finally catches on. It was a great role to ad to her already impressive resume.

Gordon-Levitt carries the film wonderfully but with some arguable inconsistencies if we were to overanalyze it. There were moments early on where you could see the confident superstar trying to shine through the anxious and confused victim, and it was just so well done. I wanted more of that through the film but it seemed to be something that faded away once the story picked up. Still I enjoyed the nuances Gordon-Levitt was bringing to the part when the awkward anxiety won out.

I think he’s proven that he can do noir, he can do crime, and he can capably lead a really wonderful story with the best of them. In the past few years he’s left behind the roles that made him famous and has embraced the roles that will make him one of our generations finest actors. Up next Gordon-Levitt will be playing second fiddle in some larger budget films (Killshot) as he begins to prove his abilities to a wider audience. Hollywood has taken notice and if he keeps producing great work in interesting films, it won’t be long before the rest of the world catches on.

The Lookout will lose you in what it doesn’t do. This story is about one man manipulating another into helping him rob a bank and there’s a real chance to do that manipulation in a devious and original way. But it was never truly explored. Goode’s character could have been taking advantage of Pratt’s disability, the way he has to write everything down and stick to patterns. Instead the only thing done to tempt or influence Pratt into helping them rob the bank is them waving a piece of ass in front of him. It seemed like a wasted chance to do something really creative with an original character, because anyone will fall for a beautiful woman’s charms. Janitor or millionaire, we all have the same weakness. It would have been great to see a less obvious path taken.

If you can get passed that you might be a little jaded that The Lookout doesn’t really deliver a big payoff surprise ending. It's odd that with a movie like this you almost want there to be a big twist. You almost need it. Like Memento or even Levitt's last movie Brick, you want to be impressed by something the filmmakers concluded to that you didn't see coming. The Lookout doesn't have that big twist, and it doesn't even have the big revenge rampage other movies would quickly jump to, but somehow it works.

It's not the kind of movie that lives and dies on a 3rd-act revelation, nor does it depend on the gritty built-up bank robbery (which just so happens to take place in the third act as well). It's more about the character and a particular situation he's gotten himself into. A monumental, life-or-death situation that will be one of the significant events that defines [b]his[/b] life, but by today's movie-going standards it's not an event. It's just a story.

I have no problem with that. Some of the greatest movies are made from the simplest of stories, and The Lookout had me captivated and interested all the way through. I admit – I was looking for the payoff. I was anticipating the other shoe dropping. I was trying to guess the surprise twist, but when the movie played out in its realistic and exciting way, it was hard to be upset. Because it was still really good.

Rating: 8 out of 10 - I had a really good time with this one, it’s the perfect boost of smart, character-driven crime that theaters needed right now. So many movie lately focused on action or humor or nothing at all. The Lookout ignores all the flash and instead tells a simple story focusing on the characters. In today’s busy box-office that’s really refreshing.

Yeah, the chances of me picking this movie up on DVD are strong. While I had a bad case of “they should be doing this� while watching the film the first time through, I think the power of the choices they made will shine when revisiting the film on video. Of course spending the money would be a lot easier if it had a nice commentary track and a starving artist friendly price tag.

The story in the comic is absolutely true except for one thing. I actually put the comic back. I did take the comic from the store but not after some serious back and forth. After struggling to remove it from its case on the wall I was overwhelmed with guilt. I strolled around the store with the comic in my jacket for a few minutes before coming to my senses and struggled to get it back on the wall. After circling a few more times, the dark side won out and I struggled one last time to slip the comic off the wall and back into my jacket.

It was the first and last thing I ever shoplifted and I still feel kind of bad about it. The comic I took was one of the early Knightfall issues with the Kelly Jones cover and I cringe now when I got to a comic book store or comic convention and see it in the dollar bin. Chances are the store never would have sold it, and even if they had I’m sure they were sitting on a mountain more ready to replace the one I took on the wall. But it still wasn’t mine to take.

I’ve since learned that the comic industry for the storeowners is a very difficult one. They have to put up with fickle fans, uncertain fluxuations in popularity of books they order 3 months in advance, and of course – dick kids like me taking stuff of their walls. Now, I’m not the reason that store closed down, but it still doesn’t make what I did right. Don’t be a fool kids, stealing is wrong. Even if you get away with it, the guilt will live with you forever.

Memento - Any spooky crime thriller that has a main character with some sort of brain malfunction will of course draw some comparisons the Memento, one of the best movies of my lifetime, period. The things I feel The Lookout got wrong are the things that Memento did right and chances are that had I never seen Memento, I never would’ve seen these “problems� within The Lookout. Problems that aren’t really problems at all but really just a comparison to a movie that is not fair to compare to.

I’d imagine director Scott Frank loves Memento but hates the comparison, because The Lookout obviously doesn’t strive to be the kind of reverse formatted brain tease that Memento is. It’s a much more straight forward character piece where as Memento is just as much about what happens next (or is it before?) as it is about the people making the moves.

Between the two I prefer Memento, which absolutely blew my mind a few years back, but The Lookout is not without merit. It definitely has its own wonderful story to tell, but its heart beats in the world that Memento created.

Slow Burn - The trailer for this erotic thriller (sorry, that’s honestly the best way to describe it.) really stood out to me as something interesting that I was shocked I hadn’t heard of sooner. The film has a cool cast of talented people, and a dark, sexy tone that instantly lets you know that something is not right.

Slow Burn’s main character is a reputable woman in the community that is revealed to be a femme fatale in every way you’d imagine. Clearly she is messing with every one that crosses her path and some of them are ending up dead. She plays the victim claiming self-defense, so you’re not sure if this is just bad luck or Basic Instinct 3. A few too many hints are dropped and the cool cast and a slow motion backless blouse shot won’t be enough to distract you from trying to put the pieces together on your own.

I’ll bite my tongue on what my official guess is, but predictable or not the movie looks interesting enough to check out. The one deterrent to any hope I might have that this movie might be good is that IMDB lists its release as 2005. That’s either an honest mistake or a red flag that Slow Burn fumbled and stalled in development hell for over 2 years. Something that is never a good sign for quality. We’ll know for sure in a couple of weeks.

That’s it for now but I’ve got some good stuff coming up. I’d elaborate more but after tonight’s Triple Feature Talkcast I’m a little burnt out. If you’d like to hear my really flustered explanation of The Lookout, be sure to listen to last nights episode. Thanks for reading.