
I found another movie on my list of “want to watch” movies the other day on TMC. I’ve found some gems on TMC rather than on the high profile channels Showtime or HBO.
The movie is The Lookout. It is a smart, tense small-town film noir that isn’t flashy or fast paced.
It’s star, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, also was in the move Brick that I liked. (He is probably most well known for his part on 3rd Rock from the Sun.) The director, Scott Frank, was writer for the movies Minority Report and Get Shorty. This is his first movie directing and I think he did a nice job.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays the main character Chris Pratt. He was a well to do, former state hockey star with a beautiful girl friend and everything going for him.
In a brief, careless moment of showing off, he was responsible for a terrible car accident that killed two of his best friends and left him with brain damage.
Similar to the movie Momento, Chris’s memory loss gives him the need to write everything down in a notebook.
In particular, Chris has difficulty "sequencing" -- remembering in what order to do things. This makes even opening a can of tomatoes a difficult task, one of hundreds he faces every day.
He works as a lonely night janitor in a small bank and goes to therapy classes. He shares an apartment with a blind man named Lewis (Jeff Daniels). (Jeff is excellent as usual.)
Lewis was helpful with Chris' sequencing problem, explaining how you start with the end result you want and then step by step work backwards doing what needs to be done to achieve each level. (This is helpful at the end of the movie.)
Chris meets up with a some people that want to take advantage of his job at the bank (meaning rob it). They treat him like he is normal. All Chris wants is to meet some people that he can be friends with like before his accident.
The movie has a nice look to it. There are desolate road scenes that remind me of Fargo. The look of the quiet, rural, small town stores at night is right on – down to the yellowish glare the streetlights reflecting off the snowy streets and sidewalks.