The Lookout

Directed by Scott Frank

Already, so soon, 26-year-old Joseph Gordon-Levitt has sunk to the level of bad-news veteran actors like Andy Garcia. His appearance in a film has become a warning sign: DANGER! BAD IDEAS AHEAD! Gordon-Levitt follows the ugly streak of Mysterious Skin and Brick with his new film The Lookout, another of those indies that mistake “dumb” for “edgy.” He plays Chris Pratt, a rich, pampered high school star athlete whose reckless driving kills two friends and leaves him brain damaged. Now an adult, Chris lives separate from his wealthy family, sharing an apartment with a blind guardian (Jeff Daniels) who leaves notes around to prod Chris’ faulty memory.

As if that premise wasn’t contrived enough, writer/director Scott Frank compounds the Memento knock-off with a criminal subplot. Chris, who slums as a night janitor at a small-town bank in Kansas, is suckered into a robbery scheme by an envious high school alumnus, Gary Spargo (Matthew Goode), who heads a gang of low-lifes representing Kansas’ loutish underclass. The wide-empty spaces, snowy fields and cast of eccentric supporting players (including a triggerman with long hair and sunglasses) suggest a mirthless Fargo—especially when the gang entraps Chris with a flirty-but-sentimental stripper named Luvlee Lemons (Isla Fisher). Upping the cliché quotient, Frank pits rivals Chris and Gary in a battle of nitwits. Each reverts to basic loathsome instincts—Midwestern gunplay—so that the plot then shifts into A History of Violence territory.

It takes a highly naive, cynical performer—or a doltish film critic—to find this nonsense interesting or surprising. Gordon-Levitt has become the go-to actor for filmmakers peddling toxic concepts. It was not for lack of trying that Mysterious Skin and Brick just missed being the worst films of their respective years. Critics praised Gordon-Levitt’s performances in both, seemingly because his submission to those questionable premises showed callow commitment; he makes pathology cute. In The Lookout, Gordon-Levitt cements his indie rep as the poster boy for dysfunction.

Being an indie puppet means a willingness to pervert contemporary notions of heroism, and in The Lookout, Gordon-Levitt once again plays a moral defective as if the film’s absurdities made sense; they’re merely trendy. Scott Frank’s Fincheresque directorial debut lays out its cynicism in Gary’s advice to Chris: “Who ever has the money has the power.” (SPOILER ALERT!) When the bank heist goes bad—as you know it will—and Chris takes up arms against the lowlifes who resent and exploit him, he internalizes the lesson: HE WHO HAS THE MONEY HAS THE POWER. That’s Hollywood talking. Brain-damaged Chris repeats the life-lesson for extra emphasis, as a mantra before wiping out his opponents. It’s no accident that Scott Frank’s plot twist—the nerd turns avenger—merely validates rich kid Chris’ deep sense of privilege. That’s what indie card-calling movies like this are all about. The Lookout is so fatuously contrived it is the first movie that actually made me pine for the loss of Robert Altman; fearing we’ll never see real-life observation on the screen again.