At the Movies: The Lookout
After watching a ton of movies in my lifetime, I like to think that I have become pretty good at identifying bad movies based on the trailer. It is still difficult to watch the trailer and predict if the movie will be good, but it's relatively easy to see if the movie is going to be stupid and/or suck.
I saw television trailers for a movie called "The Lookout" and immediately pegged it as a crappy movie. It clearly violates the "unimaginative title" rule. Who's the lead? Oh, it's the kid from that abysmal sitcom "3rd Rock from the Sun." What, Urkel wasn't available? And the cheesy one-liner at the end..."I have the money, I have the power!" Not a good sign.
So I was pretty surprised when The Lookout registered a solid 88% on the Tomatometer. Curious, I made it a point to go see it, mainly to figure out how I could have misjudged it. Not the best reason to spend $10 and 2 hours, but what the heck.
The Lookout wasn't anything like what I thought it would be. It's pretty clear that the marketing guys who work for the studio really had no idea how to sell this movie to potential audiences, hence the lousy TV spots. It seems like a standard heist movie, but it's much more than that. Though the heist is the central event of the film, the focus is on the main character, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt (who has now earned the right to never again be called "that kid from 3rd Rock").
The central character has suffered head trauma from a car accident and has difficulty carrying out simple, everyday tasks. He's a completely different person since the accident, and his life has turned out quite a bit different than expected. Watching him get caught up in the heist is really compelling, and the sequence where he tries to figure his way out of it is downright brilliant.
The movie is slow at times, but overall quite enjoyable. Despite all the gunplay in the trailer, this does not fall into the action/suspense genre. Definitely worth a rental if you are in the mood for a thoughtful, deliberate movie.
