The Lookout

“The Lookout”

USA. 2007. Written and directed by Scott Frank. Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jeff Daniels, Matthew Goode, Isla Fisher, Carla Gugino and Bruce McGill.

Rating: ★★★½

“Start at the end, work backwards. You can’t tell a story if you don’t know where it’s going.”

So says a character in “The Lookout,” which takes a standard genre picture and transforms it. Writer/director Scott Frank knew his film should end with a crowd-pleasing suspense climax of a crime movie and his challenge here is to deliver it with refreshing, novel characters and a compelling story. He has done that and more with this exciting thriller that works even better as a portrait of an unusually flawed protagonist. This is Chris Pratt (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who used to be a somebody and is now marginalized as a nobody after a car accident has left him with mental disabilities.

The film opens with Chris driving one night with his girlfriend, Kelly and two of his friends through a dark road in the middle of nowhere. He recklessly turns off the lights to wow his girlfriend with the sight of fireflies in the sky, causing the car accident that kills two of his friends, and leaves his girlfriend without a leg and him with mental and emotional scars.

The first act of the movie carefully paints Chris’ simpleton life of dealing with those old wounds. He has to write down every minute action on his notebook from waking up and taking a shower to cleaning the floor in the bank where he works as a janitor. His family simply looks at him in condescension and contempt, as seen in a disastrous Thanksgiving dinner. With no friends other than his blind older roommate, Lewis (Jeff Daniels), due to his impaired inhibitions, it is no surprise that he would want to sit closer to an old acquaintance, Gary Spargo (Matthew Goode) that seems to want to make friends with him. Read no further if you have not seen the film’s previews.

We know Gary could be trouble from the instant we see him. He has been calmly observing Chris working in the bank at night and he says he has been looking up in envy to Chris despite himself being two years ahead. One of Gary’s friends, Luvlee (Isla Fisher) seems to take a liking to Chris as well, sparking his long dormant romantic interest. Needless to say, it is all a ploy to lure the insider in the middle of a bank heist he and his gang have been plotting for years. That is, until he tries to devise a way to foil it…

The movie mounts its genuine suspense moments very efficiently but the most intriguing aspect of Scott Frank’s story is in Chris’ guilt. Guilt over the sin of causing the deadly accident and self-loathing in looking at himself paying a dear price for it. The conflict between his desire to return to his old life (“Whoever has the money has the power,” Gary tempts him) and his anxiety in adding another potential source of moral regret fuels the meticulous narrative.

Frank, who directs his first feature after penning previous accomplished efforts such as “Get Shorty” and “Minority Report,” draws precise, measured performances from his impressive cast. Every actor has his or her moment to move beyond the standard trappings of the genre and pop off the screen. Look, for example, at the scene where Lewis sizes up Luvlee and cuts through all her pretense. Daniels is wonderful as the sound voice of moral reason and Chris’ fierce protector, but observe how Fisher pulls off the tricky challenge of playing a bad actress to Lewis without it feeling phony to us.

Then, there is Joseph Gordon-Levitt. No one would have guessed that he would play this kind of character from his days as the kid from “3^rd Rock from the Sun.” Just as he tackled challenging and tough material in “Mysterious Skin” and “Brick,” he carries the story with his magnetic face that projects a lifetime of regret and attracts instinctive sympathy in his plight.

When the heist finally kicks in, it builds to a clash of personalities and motivations rather than a series of plot devices. The crime elements move a little too much like clockwork in their setup and payoff but the screenplay knows suspense is rooted in our care for the characters rather than shootings between cardboard cutouts.

“The Lookout” is above all a nuanced character study of a man who must battle his own inner demons to do the right thing. How often do we overlook or marginalize the janitor or custodian we see at the bank or even a school? It is the film’s achievement that it intently works backwards to show that such a person can share the same vulnerabilities anyone else could face.