The Lookout (review)
We saw The Lookout last night in a preview screening, encouraged particularly to see Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who we enjoyed in Brick, a movie that transported the noir idiom to a high school. We were not disappointed.
Gordon-Levitt plays Chris Pratt, whose life as a high school sports hero has collapsed after a car wreck left him with brain damage. He now struggles as the night-time janitor for the small-town bank in Noel, which makes him useful to a gang of bank robbers wishing to break in just after the local farmers deposit their harvest money. The movie unfolds as Pratt becomes embroiled in the bank robbery and battles his inner demons to find self-respect. Complicating his decisions are a wealthy family and a father with high expectations, sudden acquisition of a girlfriend, Pratt’s guilt over killing and maiming friends in the crash, and Pratt’s own neurological limitations.
The audience will be tempted to compare The Lookout with the highly experimental Memento, whose protagonist suffers from an inability to remember anything for more than a few minutes. Pratt, too has trouble with memory, though not so exaggerated, as well as bursts of anger, inappropriate speech, and a left hand that won’t always cooperate. Unlike Memento, however, The Lookout treats brain damage only as a significant plot element, and not the very premise of the movie. Memento depended entirely on its gimmick. A good gimmick, and very successfully exploited, but a gimmick nonetheless. Pratt’s disabilities are less pronounced, more plausible, and more human, made doubly so by Gordon-Levitt’s performance.
As good as Gordon-Levitt is, he is bettered by Matthew Goode as Gary Spargo, the charismatic gang leader who recruits Pratt for the bank job and generally serves as the voice of evil. (Villains have all the fun.) The casting generally is excellent, including bit parts like the bank manager and the puppy-dog deputy who patrols Noel at night. My only exception to casting is Jeff Daniels, who seems to be coasting a bit as Chris’s blind roommate, Lewis, assigned by the rehab office.
Top honors, however, belong to the script, which could easily be overlooked beside the fine acting. Action moves briskly, and the movie is populated by just enough characters. The dialogue is tight, but never so tight as to sound practiced or pat, except during Spargo’s recruitment speech, which should sound practiced. Like Pratt’s disabilities, character motivations are plausible and humanly shaded. Case in point: when Pratt’s new girlfriend, Luvlee, is forced to confront her part in the brewing trouble, she neither becomes Pratt’s salvation, which would be easy to script, nor his ice-hearted betrayer, which would also be easy. She just chickens out and leaves town, never to be seen again. Very realistic, very human, very satisfying. Only at the end does exceptional writing succumb to temptation and rush to a tidy, upbeat little package. A somewhat grimmer ending, but only somewhat, would reward the audience better.
Full confession: I had to skip a few minutes in the middle of the movie. My tests aren’t in yet, but all signs point to a developing kidney stone, which makes sitting for long periods painful. My wife, feeling guilty for taking me out in the circumstances, asked whether going to the movie was worth it. I have to say it decidedly was.