Be on the LOOKOUT for It

I apologize for the corniness of the post-title; I couldn’t help myself.

I’ve just watched the critically-lauded but comercially-challenged The Lookout, and it totally wasn’t what I had expected. In fact, in many respects, it was the opposite picture of the one that I had expected: assured, poignant, and intimate.

The studio touted The Lookout as a noir, presumably in the hopes of bringing all of us serious film-whores out to see it. While it officially does belong to that genre, it isn’t what audiences have come to view as a modern noir. There aren’t any fancy third-act plot twists on display here, as one would probably observe in, say, a Brian DePalma picture of the same sort.

I think that once viewers see that The Lookout isn’t as complicated as it was marketed to be, the movie will be a success on DVD. This is a smart movie — make no mistake about it — but it’s more of a deeply-realized character-study than it is a plot-based thriller. In this respect, the picture is more “art house” than the studio wanted you to believe. That being said, I think it’s the type of “art house” that people will respond to.

And it’s much better than Brick, the other recent Joseph Gordon Levitt noir-vehicle. Where Brick was cold and calculated, The Lookout is affecting and empathetic.

Rent it.