Review: The Lookout (2007)
Scott Frank, one of the best lowlife-noir-crime genre screenwriters of the past decade, has decided to direct as well as write his latest, The Lookout, and the result is about as good as you’d hope, and in key with what Frank’s work is typically all about: no bullshit meat and potatoes craftmanship, story over ego. “The Lookout” has a straight forward, ready built for noir set up: a guy blinded by his desires getting involved in something out of his league, but there also seems to be a gentler character study struggling to get out, a more “Nobody’s Fool”-ish requiem for lost dreams, to never escaping your small town. This second thread humanizes the characters and steers “The Lookout” away from feeling like an exercise, but it also, like many genre splices, divides your attention. I almost felt as if I were watching two very promising, not quite there movies in place of one solid, coherent whole.
Our protaganist is Chris Pratt (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). Once a sharp, popular high school hockey ace, Pratt, at the height of his promise, makes an exceedingly stupid decision that costs a few of his friends their lives and leaves him scarred and brain damaged. Cut to four years later, and Pratt is a shambling shadow of himself, struggling to remember what he did just a few hours ago, working nights as a janitor at a bank, and having to tolerate the collective condescension of his entire hometown who once had much higher hopes for him. Well, except for Lewis (Jeff Daniels), his caustic, blind roommate who sees a little of himself in Chris’s self-loathing.
Pratt has figurative, and most likely literal, blue balls, a bubbling restless rage with himself, a hopeless prisoner to his own limitations. He’s the perfect mark. One night, as Chris is nursing a non-alcoholic beer at a bar (he can’t drink), and sheepishly trying to strike up a conversation with a young woman a few seats down, Gary Spargo (Mathew Goode), a sharp, good looking man who claims to remember Chris from the good old days, approaches, and wouldn’t you know it, he knows this knockout who used to have a crush on Chris back in high school…
Levitt, Daniels and Goode are terrific, and would be worth seeing “The Lookout” for even if it were a shoddier enterprise. Goode, in particular, stood out to me, probably because I don’t know him as well as the other two (I’m getting greedy with Levitt and Daniels, expecting brilliant, lived in characters every time out, as unappreciative as this sounds, they haven’t let me down yet.) Goode nearly stole the show in “Match Point” a few years prior, and his work here, while scuzzier, seamier, is not entirely dissimilar. He’s sexy self-entitlement, the guy who gets all the girls with a jolting malevolence at his core. Goode’s Gary Spargo, tall, slim, with close cropped hair, looks like a six foot weasel.
I’m not interested in discussing any more of the plot, but, rest assured, if you’ve seen more than one two time loser finds the wrong fix movies in your life, you’ll find this one easy to call, and Frank knows that. The pleasure of “The Lookout” is the telling, the mood, Frank’s facility with down home dialogue that reveals more than even the speaker realizes. Frank builds his film so well, that I felt a mild pang of disappointment when we reach the inevitably violent third act. I wanted to see these characters in a shaggier movie, free from the conventions of the three act morality tale, or, I wanted to see these characters in a harder, crazier three act morality tale. Still, its churlish to complain, “The Lookout” is a disciplined, confident ninety five minutes at the movies, with a few performances that stick to the ribs even while some of the plot specifics grow fuzzy.
Leave a Reply