Friday, April 6, 2007

Jason watches "The Lookout"

A great movie, fully deserving its 87% tomatometer score. Joseph Gordon-Levitt has risen waaay above his days on "Third Rock From the Sun" (see also, his work in "Brick"). Jeff Daniels, with this and "The Squid and the Whale" a year and a half ago is doing some of the finest work of his career. And writer Scott Frank shows talent in his first try in the director's chair.

A few notes, I've heard some comparisons between this and "Memento", just because the hero has short term memory problem (in this case, Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character, Chris Pratt, is in a car accident in the beginning, haunting him not just with memory problems, but guilt over killing two friends and crippling his girlfriend. He's then lured into a plot to rob the small rural bank where he works as a night janitor). I think such comparisons are superficial--"Memento" is a very formal, structured movie while this is much more free.

The last comment is, I'm glad I waited a day to write this up, because ironically it's a movie that works better the more you remember it. At the time watching it, I didn't know what to make of everything (although it was still engaging enough). But by employing Chris's strategy of starting at the end and working back, it's much more rewarding in my memory. Pretty cool.

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