Monday, April 28, 2008
The Rewards of The Lookout
Oh Lord. Another film about a mental case! My initial response in viewing of The Lookout, a 2007 directorial debut by screenwriter Scott Frank was not positive. The lead character played by Joseph Gordon-Leavitt (also excellent in a strange little high school noir entitled Brick, but best known as the nerd child alien in 3rd Rock from the Sun) is a head injury victim with memory and sequencing disabilities. I thought Memento was basically a trick film and had just viewed Guy Ritchie's bizarre and frustrating Revolverwhich featured not a protagonist trying to identify reality but the EGO of the protagonist's battle with identify reality as its core.
But The Lookout proved to be something very different. It has both an excellently crafted screenplay with strong characters and a sense of place. It takes place in Kansas City, but filmed in Manitoba's winter. The options for protagonist Chris Pratt, former high school star with a bent mental frame are limited as is his judgment when he encounters a nefarious group with designs for him which involve his job. They reel him into their web with Luvlee Lemons, a moll who comes off as a new take on the kind of role Claire Trevor used to play back in the forties.
The rewards of a well-crafted screenplay with right as rain plot and something more to say are so very rare these days. Michael Clayton was and When the Devil Knows Your Dead are recent exceptions. As to is The Lookout in which the writer who created excellent adaptations of Get Shorty and Out of Sight is able to realize his own story and vision and deliver it. And still on the level of craft to the aforementioned author of those adaptations, Elmore Leonard. There is plot to be sure, but much substance along the way in a story that begins with chasing fireflies and ends with substantial and well-earned reflection.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:59 PM
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