As go-to gimmicks go, brain damage ranks with fireballs and frame-ups.
In the case of The Lookout, that's a weeping shame. Why? Because had this knotty smalltown thriller not languished in developmental Hades for a decade -- in which such A-list directors as Sam Mendes, David Fincher and Michael Mann circled Scott Frank's script -- it might now be regarded as a classic noir.
Instead, it'll struggle to shake off the comparisons to Fargo and, especially, Memento.
Like that 2001 noir, The Lookout takes a hero lost in psychological limbo and tangles him in crime, deception and paranoia. It's not the accomplished puzzler that Christopher Nolan's Memento was, but it doesn't intend to be.
Directed by Frank -- who eventually decided to take the reins of his long-gestating project himself -- it's as much a moving, mesmerizing exploration of loss and unrequited yearning as it is a nerve-rattling crime yarn.
Credit Frank and a canny cast of performers, specifically Joseph Gordon-Levitt. The 26-year-old is probably still best identified as the adolescent alien in TV's Third Rock from the Sun but, as he has demonstrated in such indie fare as Brick and Mysterious Skin, he's got the chops. Is it too early to declare him the next Ryan Gosling? If his performance here is an indication -- and with more high-profile roles in the offing -- such declarations are, if anything, overdue.
Here he stars as Chris Pratt, a high school hockey player and rich kid who's at the wheel when a horrific highway crash kills two friends, maims his girlfriend and forever messes with his mind.
Years later, with no one to blame but himself -- there's no mysterious murderer to grant him purpose or clarity -- he works as a janitor in a smalltown Kansas bank, toiling (barely) through an existence in which the simplest tasks confound him. He's helped by Lewis (Jeff Daniels) -- his blind, cheerfully caustic roommate -- and mostly ignored by the wealthy family he can no longer face.
That makes him easy prey for the likes of Gary (Matthew Goode), a scruffy stranger who insinuates himself into Chris' life -- even introducing him to Luvlee Lemons (Isla Fisher, the redhead from Wedding Crashers), a former stripper who makes Pratt remember what it was like to feel self-worth.
Like we said, easy prey.
Turns out helping the handicapped is just a side benefit of Gary's real aim: To knock over the bank, plump with farm cash, where Chris works. To say more would be criminal.
While The Lookout might mark Frank's sensational directorial debut, he's no amateur -- having scripted the adaptations of Elmore Leonard's Out of Sight and Get Shorty.
Like those movies, The Lookout is crackling entertainment. But it offers more.
No glib, thanks. Just guts.
(This film is rated 14-A)
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