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Critics Consensus: The Lookout is a genuinely suspenseful and affecting noir due to the great ensemble cast and their complex, realistic characters.
Critic Consensus: The Lookout is a genuinely suspenseful and affecting noir due to the great ensemble cast and their complex, realistic characters.
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All Critics (168) | Top Critics (40) | Fresh (147) | Rotten (21) | DVD (16)
Frank has cooked up an interesting moral dilemma for a character ill-equipped to deal with one. Chris has made one big mistake. Is he up for another?
Forgettable fun.
The Lookout's thriller elements could stand to be more surprising, but they're ultimately in service of a better understanding of the characters. Usually, it's the other way around.
There's nothing here you haven't seen before, and even the pleasant hum of a well-tuned engine begins to drone a little.
A straight-ahead drama, perfectly accessible though psychologically intricate, coupled shrewdly to a crime thriller.
The movie is sometimes deliberately paced, then intensifies at unlikely moments, artfully blending pulse-stopping, nerve-jangling suspense with sharp dialogue and nuanced portrayals.
It uses its strengths to keep you guessing, but it also ensures emotive heft. The movie could have easily been unbalanced, but instead it's uniquely engaging.
Strip away the head-trauma hero, and you're left with a white-trash heist film.
A professional script professionally shot, rather than a personal story burning to be told
First-time director Scott Frank, who penned Out of Sight and Minority Report, shapes some sharp noirish notes.
The best young actor in movies today may well be Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
The vast majority of his veteran contemporaries should be so lucky as to have their best dramas be as engrossing as Frank's first.
I'm not into heist movies generally, but this was pretty good. Very interesting main character.
Super Reviewer
This is much more of a character study than it is a thriller with the first half of the film dedicated to just getting you to know the characters and their lives before the drama truly starts. I honestly didn't know where the story was going to go, but I was engrossed because of the nuanced performances of Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Jeff Daniels. The thrills and plot don't really kick in for about 35-40 minutes, but once they do the pacing takings a turn and really ratchets up the suspense. This is a great thriller reminiscent of Memento because of the similar circumstances of the main characters. Levitt plays a character who ends up with significant damage from a car wreck that makes it to where he cannot sequence events properly or handle everyday things without a little bit of a struggle. Much of the suspense and unpredictability of the film comes from not knowing whether his character knows what to do or not. It adds an extra level beyond the standard plot. Matthew Goode adds in a chilling performance as the leader of the bad guys who convince Levitt to help them rob the bank he works for at night as the janitor. The dialogue is well written and the story keeps you on your toes throughout. This is also one of the few times where I really enjoyed the ending. The main characters come full circle and it's just fun to see. I can't ask for much more from a movie like this.
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A taut thriller with great performances, but nothing about 'The Lookout' is extraordinarily memorable or wholly unique. A good script and a decent film, but there is something all too familiar and unoriginal about it, as if its been done before. We've all seen thrillers like this time and time again.
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