Extras

• Commentary with Writer/Director Scott Frank and Cinematographer Alar Kivilo

• Making-of Featurette: Sequencing The Lookout

• Featurette: Behind the Mind of Chris Pratt

15 chapters

Standard Blu-ray case.

Release Date: August 14, 2007

The Lookout

Head injury + a list-making compulsion = Memento – right? I'm sure the comparison has been made to death elsewhere; but be advised, if you haven't seen this film, that that is where the comparison ends. Let's not mention it again, shall we.

A well-scripted screenplay, well-acted, photographed and scored. What more could you ask? The story itself doesn't win any honors for originality, but the execution is several cuts above your garden-variety melodrama-cum -thriller. There's an awful lot of talent out there, if only they could all come together in the same place. The Lookout is just such a place. O.K., it's not perfect: I'm not entirely convinced by all that happens in the bank during the heist, but it has savvy about all its characters.

Chris Pratt's voiceover monologues are especially keen: witty, despairing, insightful, and hopeful by turns. And here's the surprise: Unlike many actors who try this trick, Joseph Gordon-Levitt can actually read. He can speak. And he can act. From such lowly and (I thought at the time) not particularly promising beginnings in his first season as a teenage alien on that funniest of TV sitcoms about visitors from another planet who take on human form to assimilate, learn and report, this young man, now 25, has transformed himself into a real actor. And he has an expressive face and the physicality to go with the talent. If this movie had nothing but Gordon-Levitt's performance and a good script for him to read, The Lookout would be worth your time. (By the way, I read in the IMDB Trivia that one of his favorite films is Dumbo, which earns him extra points in my book.)

But there is more: in all its supporting characters, especially Matthew Goode as the conniving, insinuating Gary Spargo. Again, the writing is there to clarify the monster that lurks without, yet understands the need to be embraced by the weakness within. The writing is good, despite one or two minor distractions (as when Chris hits on his case worker.) It's all definitely small-town, and often correspondingly small-minded. There are few big or profound ideas in this script – but, then it's not that kind of movie.

The Lookout

The Score Card

The Movie : 8

Chris Pratt is the most popular boy in school in a small town in Kansas. He's a whiz at hockey. His family is rich. He has a winning personality. He's good looking. And he drives a cool car – right into a truck, unfortunately, along with three hapless friends. Four years later, he is sorting out a difficult life as a disabled person. He shares an apartment with a blind man (played with sardonic, tough love appeal by Jeff Daniels.) To the casual observer, Chris looks little different from anyone else, a little slower, perhaps. But then we notice his intermittent difficulty in grasping things with one hand, or his inability to correctly remember his to-do list in sequence. His daily life – no, his hourly life - is managed by lists. He works hard at his life now. By and large, the townspeople are sympathetic. His father, less so. Chris's life is an open book, as it has always been, and he falls easy prey to those few who would take advantage of his awareness of the discrepancy between who he is, who he was, and who he might have become: Thus our movie - as a few bad people who also see a similar discrepancy in their own lives plot to use Chris as a key player for a bank heist.

Image : 8.5

Photography this good demands a good image, and this Blu-ray delivers in all the right places: deep blacks, natural color, the ability for the shadows to be alive with possibilities without artificial brightening. As usual with on-location shooting, sharpness is inconsistent, but that's in the original film. Only the opening scene in the car at night has the hallmark of heightened reality that we expect from a special effects sequence.

Audio & Music : 8

The Lookout is not a crash-bang movie, so the important thing is that the dialogue is clearly enough heard in busy contexts such as the local tavern, at the Learning Center, or at the party at the farm. The sound is good enough, but not remarkable. That's probably as it should be. I found the music a little odd at first, but soon got used to it. I think the composer was just trying to be portentous as the movie started.

Empathy : 9

All in all, I was riveted.

Operations : 7

Straightforward, simple, easy to understand menu. Everything worked. Downgraded score due only to its not taking advantage of the Blu-ray medium.

Extras : 7

Behind the Mind of Chris Pratt is a 10-minute reflection on his character by Gordon-Levitt. Sequencing The Lookout is about a 20-minute making-of featurette. Both of these Extras are formatted in 16x9, but they interpolate scenes from the film in HD with comments by the director and cast in SD.