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THE LOOKOUT

 ABOUT THE MOVIE

Genre: Drama
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jeff Daniels, Matthew Goode, Bruce McGill, Isla Fisher
Director: Scott Frank
Rating: NC-16 (Coarse Language)
Year Made: 2007
Official Website:
www.thelookout-movie.com

 

 


 SPECIAL FEATURES

- "Sequencing THE LOOKOUT" Making of Featurette
- "Behind the Mind of Chris Patt"
- Audio Commentary with Writer/Director Scott Frank and Director of Photography Atar Kivilo

 

 


 TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Languages: English/Portuguese
Thai/Japanese
Subtitles: English/Chinese/Bahasa/Malay/Thai/
Spanish/Portuguese/Korean
Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1
Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
Running Time: 1 hr 39 mins
Region Code: 3
Distributor: Scorpio East

 

 

SYNOPSIS: 

Chris "Slapshot" Pratt whose once-bright future has been dimmed by a head injury, is a night janitor at a bank. Lonely and frustrated, Chris falls prey to a con man's seductive promise of romance and a better life and agrees to help rob the bank where he works. Filled with heart-pounding action, edge-of-your-seat suspense and a twist you'll never see coming.

MOVIE REVIEW

It’s such a pity local audiences didn’t manage to catch this well-made thriller on the big screens. Fear not though, because of the availability of DVDs, you can now watch this intelligently tense and sincerely heartfelt movie at the comfort of your own home.

Opening with literally a bang, we see Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Mysterious Skin, Brick) getting into a car accident and injures his brain. With his life turned upside down, he works as a night janitor at a bank and eventually becomes involved in a bank robbery.

While first-time director Scott Frank’s self-written screenplay does not sound too different from other conventional dramas out there, the approach to making this movie is definitely worth commending. Having written screenplays for movies like Get Shorty (1995) and Minority Report (2002), Frank has sharply integrated the elements of a bank heist with an interesting back story of Gordon-Levitt’s brain damage to very good effect. The result is an innovative tale of living with guilt, letting go of the past and moving on for the future.

Having seen Gordon-Levitt’s heart-aching performance as an abused boy in Mysterious Skin (2004), his performance here did not disappoint either. The vulnerability and defenselessness of his character came through strongly, and one can easily empathize with the poor boy’s situation. Couple that with the reliable Jeff Daniels (Good Night, and Good Luck, Infamous) as a blind man and the charismatic Matthew Goode (Match Point, Imagine Me & You) as a conniving crook, and you’d have an ensemble of fine actors to engage you for the movie’s runtime of 99 minutes.

And with good casting of actors, all that is needed is a tight and inventive story that works for both the thinking viewer who wants to be entertained and the viewer who wants a firmly well-crafted thriller. With James Newton Howard’s (Lady in the Water, Blood Diamond) nuanced music underscore and Atar Kivilo’s (The Ice Harvest, The Lake House) grounded cinematography, you’ll be satisfied both in the visual and audio departments.

There is nothing more satisfying than a suspenseful movie that keeps you at the edge of your seat while making you reflect on your self-being long after the credits roll, and this movie has done one great job.

SPECIAL FEATURES :

This Code 3 DVD contains two substantially informative featurettes. In the nine-minute “Behind The Mind Of Chris Platt”, a clean-cut Gordon-Levitt talks about how he created the persona for his role in the movie. The engaging actor tells us about how he hung up with people with brain injuries to do justice to his character. In the 20-minute “Sequencing The Lookout: Making-Of Featurette”, the filmmakers talk about how the movie was almost not made after a few years’ delay. Also, Daniels tells us how he does research to play a blind man very convincingly. The “Audio Commentary with Writer/Director Scott Frank and Director Of Photography Alar Kivilo” has the two humble men talking about how Frank the “rookie” made several mistakes on set, and how Kivilo made the film look good by using a new video camera, as opposed to the traditional film reels. There are also “Sneak Peeks” of DVDs of TV series like Lost, Ugly Betty and Desperate Housewives.

AUDIO/VISUAL:

The disc’s visual transfer makes enhances your viewing pleasure of Kivilo’s steady cinematography, while the movie’s audio soundtrack is available in 5.1 Dolby English, Japanese, Thai and Portuguese.

MOVIE RATING:



DVD RATING :

Review by John Li

 
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This review is made possible with the kind support from Scorpio East

 


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