00s Movie Review - The Lookout

Director: Scott Frank
Genre: Action/ Crime/ Drama
Runtime: 99 minutes
Year: 2007
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jeff Daniels, Matthew Goode, Carla Cugino, Bruce McGill, Isla Fisher, Alex Borstein

Description: Chris (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is once a promising high school athlete whose life is turned upside down following a tragic accident. As h tries to maintain a normal life, he takes a job as a janitor at a bank, where he ultimately finds himself caught up in a planned heist.

Review: Chris has trouble ordering actions, and as a result must attend therapy at e center for independent living. Simple things like telling how his day went already cause him problems. This is due to a car accident when he was still in school. Fortunately, besides the center, there is Chris’ blind roommate Lewis who wants to help him with his daily struggles. Chris works at night, as a janitor for the local bank. When he meets Gary at a bar, it looks like he got some new friends. But Gary has other plans, because he is more interested in the bank then in Chris personally.
It's a conventional story in many ways, but since the character of Chris is so interesting is goes a little deeper beyond the surface. One of the strengths of the film is the fact that the dramatic development of Chris always remains central and is the engine of all events. The heist itself is only a small part of the film.
“The Lookout” is definitely not a perfect movie, the thriller aspect is predictable and fall short of the realistic approach of what came before it. But these are basically minor criticisms of a film that convinces in its drama, which again is mostly due to the excellent performance of Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Chris. An actor I have always enjoyed watching.

Rating: 4/ 5

00s Movie Review - Law Abiding Citizen

Director: F. Gary Gray
Genre: Drama/ Thriller
Runtime: 109 minutes
Year: 2009
Starring: Gerard Butler, Jamie Foxx, Leslie Bibb, Bruce McGill, Viola Davis, Regina Hall

Description: A frustrated man (Gerard Butler) decides to take justice into his own hands after a plea bargain sets one of his family’s killers free.

Review: “Law Abiding Citizen” starts with a bang. When the happily married engineer Clyde Shelton opens the door, he is knocked down and forced to watch his family being slaughtered. No long intros, no build-up, we get right into it.
If that wasn’t bad enough, the prosecution messes up the case and the judge won’t accept Shelton’s testimony because he lost consciousness during the robbery. Prosecutor Nick Rice is also more interested in attractive deals than in justice, as a result of which only one of the two robbers is sentenced to death, and the other (the initiator of it all) gets off with a short sentence and will eventually be a free man again.
We skip to ten years later. Nick Rice now has a family of his own and is one of those present at the execution of the convicted offender. That execution goes terribly wrong. Instead of it being painless, the execution is as painful as possible. The next day, the other perpetrator is killed in the most horrible way possible and the video of this torture fest is delivered to Nick’s home address. The suspicion immediately falls on Clyde Shelton, and he is arrested. It seems like the end of the story, but it’s just the beginning. Clyde wants revenge, not just on the two bad guys who slaughtered his family, but also on the system.
“Law Abiding Citizen” is a highly original variation on the vigilante theme, which made a comeback in the 00s. And many with success ("Taken", "The Brave One", Death Sentence"). Citizens taking matter into their own hands, because the were abandoned by the court.
Originally Gerard Butler was supposed to play Nick Rice, but at the last moment he chose the role of avenging family man Clyde Shelton. Butler is really good and this film stands out because of on ingenious screenplay. It constantly misdirects the audience. But don’t think too much about the plot twists afterwards, because you will find a bunch of plot holes. Jamie Foxx is also very strong as Nick Rice.
“Law Abiding Citizen” is a fast, exciting film with a lot of violence but not hard to stomach. It’s not subtle or credible, but somehow that doesn’t matter. It’s a good, solid, entertaining thriller.

Rating: 3,5 / 5