The Lookout is the crime film as character study, as brain injury victim Joseph Gordon-Levitt is suckered into a bank heist by bad companions Matthew Goode and Isla Fisher. The crime film plot is expertly mounted, but nothing particularly special. The character work is what makes the film tick. Gordon-Levitt provides another superior performance as our memory-impaired lead, adding to his cache as one of the best young actors. Goode is simultaneously charismatic and slimy. The background is populated by interesting actors like Jeff Daniels, Bruce McGill, Carla Gugino, and Alberta Watson.
This is one of those movies where, if you like watching people--especially when they're put in the crucible--then you'll groove on the movie. If you're there for the plot, you might be disappointed. I liked it a lot.
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The thing to remember when you're watching any given Brian De Palma movie is that you are watching a movie. Never mind all the swipes from Hitchcock and Antonioni and god knows who else, the proper frame of reference is Godard, who rendered movies as abstractions. Of course, De Palma's cinema is more commercial than Godard's ever was, but if there's anyone who wields his movies as weapons in the same spirit, it's De Palma.
1984's Body Double is the director's most vicious hate note to Hollywood, and the more you know about movies, about De Palma's movies in particular, and about critics, the funnier it is. I can only imagine the glee in De Palma's black little heart as he assembled the critical blurbs for his in-film porno movie, "Holly Does Hollywood."
Sometimes, the film is blatant about what's it's really about: the swinging door with the mirror during the porno shoot is a good example--revealing the film crew. Sometimes it's subtle. During the front credits, the main title is superimposed on a desert vista that is promptly picked up and carried away by workmen on a movie set, and right after the credits, Craig Wasson's character is shown driving a car with a rear projection that's just bad enough to call attention to itself if you're looking for it (in 1984? Really? Hence the cognitive dissonance). And the film invites--nay, compels--the audience to look.
One thing that never struck me until my most recent viewing is that it's a sly quasi-remake of Blow Out. The details are different, as is the tone, but the broad outlines are the same. This has to be some kind of post-modernist coup: a director quasi-remaking his own quasi-remake of another film. It makes the head spin. And then, the coup de grace. De Palma deconstructs the shower opening of Dressed to Kill by setting up a nearly identical scene over his end-credits, then showing you the results, all laid bare like a pathologist leaving a cadaver gaping wide on the table for a medical class to examine.
I think this is one of De Palma's most underestimated films. It's actually kind of a masterpiece.
Topic: What was the last movie you watched? (Read 1536836 times)
