The Look Out for the Lookout Coming to DVD Any Day Now!

The Lookout opens nationwide at a theatre near you this Friday, March 30. I had a chance to take in a sneak preview last night and, well ... it's not great.

When Chris Pratt, the star hockey player, and spoiled rich kid, is out cruising with friends on a dark highway, on prom night, with no headlights, and crashes the car, his life is drastically changed. Two of his friends have died, one will no longer speak to him, and he doesn't remember the accident. He doesn't remember much due to his closed head injury, he is forced to keep notes in a small notepad. In fact, his whole apartment is labeled with instructions.

Do we feel sorry for him? The director, Scott Frank, seems to want you to feel sorry for him with all of the long takes, silent shots of Chris dealing with his plight, feeling sorry for himself in a lot of ways. Joseph Gordon-Levitt's performance makes you want to feel sorry for him. He is, after all, our protagonist, so we really want to feel sorry for him. But he wasn't much of a good guy in his previous life, where we are told that he once slashed a nobody player in a championship hockey game knowing he wouldn't get the penalty and suspension; this tale also looms as a sort of lost plot thread.

In fact, a lot is lost. Isla Fisher's character, Luvlee, is either bait or really falls for him, but it is all unclear. She delivers lines that seem both in awe of the legendary Chris Pratt, and yet vengeful at the same time. And as quickly as she has arrived to, and then driven the plot, she is gone. Was this film edited to hell, or is it just sloppy? Hard to tell.

The Lookout is really well acted, but the directing sort of steps on itself. The film is never really sure if it's a character study of a man with a closed head injury and the people in his life, and how he and they deal with their problems, or if it's a bank robbery film. It never truly feels like either. The bank heist plot is a really slow build that doesn't really get interesting until the third act, and the film is paced so slowly that at 99 minutes it feels like two hours. This mostly lies in the fact that it doesn't begin it's "plot" until more than half way through.