Date: August 22Location: Clifton Living Room
Along with Zodiac and Breach, this makes three smart, adult character-driven winners released in the first three months of the year (traditional dumping ground for low-expectation crap). Unfortunately, the timing probably means none of these films will be recognized come Oscar season. Writer and first-time director Scott Frank (who penned such classics as Get Shorty and Out of Sight) has delivered an award-worthy script and crafted a film that works as both a low-key heist thriller and a poignant character piece. The acting is wonderful across the board, including a haunting turn by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and scene-stealing work by Jeff Daniels (who really should be in every movie). Kudos to Mom for recalling British actor Matthew Goode from his work in Match Point — he's unrecognizable here as the sympathetically sinister antagonist. I had minor problems with some convenient turns at the climax, but nothing that would keep me from recommending this as one of the year's best films so far.
2 comments:
I know we have been butting heads lately on films, but I just dcouldn't disagree with you more on this one.
Look, I like coca-cola, steak and chocolate cake. But if you put them all in a blender, you don't wind up with the perfect meal? This is the problem with Lookout. Okay, sure, it combines the sweet strangeness of "Fargo" with the existential panic of "Memento" and some Elmore Leonard tough talk. But, to me, it all just created a cinematic tummy ache.
You couldn't watch this movie without seeing it as a paler version of Memento--especially when Chris gets sucked into a crime.
While Elmore Leonard might have had a lot of fun with the whole Chirs memory loss stuff, the director here doesn't have enough fun with it. Instead of a funny heist flick or a comedy with thrills, this director sketches out a gentle sine wave of a movie. It oscillates from not very funny to not very thrilling without ever being in a hurry to get where it's going.
The dialogue can glow like the tip of a cigar in a darkened basement full of dynamite ("That's a gun. Just know it's there."), but at other times the mood is less Raymond Chandler than Cosmo Kramer. Chris' roommate, for instance, is a blind salesman with a wacky scheme to start a restaurant in a gas station That subplot pinches precious minutes away from the heist.
The scenes where the lead slimeball tries to talk Chris into joining his goon squad have a seductive Satan-on-the-mountaintop chill - after all the world has done to Chris, doesn't it owe him some psychic relief, or at least a large cash settlement?
But there is no credibility or consistency. No bank would hire Chris - he has to be reminded, often, to lock the door - nor would any reasonably competent brigands gamble on him. The movie itself seems to come down with a case of the forgets when the heist starts to go down and Chris begins performing tasks much subtler than spoon handling. He has no trouble using a cellphone, driving a car or remembering how to get from one place to another.
There should be, but aren't, complications derived from Chris' problem with keeping secrets: A social worker who checks in solely to read his symptoms to the audience says he has a problem with "disinhibition," e.g., upon meeting a girl, he'll suddenly tell her he'd like to see her naked. I have the same problem, and I'd like to see a better movie.
I can't believe you ranked this movie so high---for me, put it DEAD LAST.
I liked that review better when I read it in the New York Post!
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