Ain't that a brick in the head

[March 28th, 2007] Throughout history, the best measure of friends has been how they advise in times of suffering. Take Job's pals: When their comrade lost his family and his health, they advised him to blame himself. The patriarch's wife told him to blame God. The friends of Chris Pratt, who has lost much of his memory and motor skills in a car wreck, don't make the same mistakes. They suggest blaming the Noel State Bank and Trust.

Chris, the understandably depressed hero played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt in The Lookout, emerged from the twisted metal of a high-school joyride with a permanent case of Movie Head Trauma. Which means he is exactly as incapacitated or capable as the plot requires at any given moment. He has trouble remembering his daily schedule or holding a beer bottle, but he can stock and fire weaponry with surprising dexterity in a crisis. His new buddies, a collection of robbers and strippers who are not apparently familiar with the symptoms of Movie Head Trauma, decide that the addled kid mopping the bank floors will make the perfect addition to their gang. Pratt is going to be the fall guy.

The Lookout's director, Scott Frank, is helming his first picture, but he's been writing in Hollywood with some success—including an Oscar nomination for Out of Sight—for nearly 20 years. The story he picked for his debut behind the camera is not one of his best, but he helps himself a fair amount by asking his lead actors to reprise their most recent successful roles while junking all that complex indie motivation. Gordon-Levitt was deliciously hard-boiled in the high-school noir Brick, and now all he has to do is keep the impassive stare and add a confused look here and there. He has no trouble with this. Even better is Jeff Daniels, who retains his shaggy beard from The Squid and the Whale and adds a pair of sunglasses to play Lewis, Chris' sightless roommate and mentor. It's a stock character, the blind man who sees all, but Daniels treats the occasion as an acting clinic for all the whippersnappers around him. He has an especially good time with Isla Fisher as Luvlee Lemons, the redhead herring that heist leader Gary (Matthew Goode) is using to lure Chris. "I've met a lot of Garys," he says with perfect indifference. "Met a few Luvlees, too."

The trouble is that most everybody in the audience has met their share of Garys and Luvlees as well, and doesn't really need an introduction to any more. The Lookout isn't too insufferable as crime exercises go, but it tosses two reasonably enjoyable performances into a generic machine. Lewis, who seems to know everything, certainly knows where the movie is going when he counsels Chris to order his confusing life in terms of stories. "I can't think of any stories," Chris complains. So Lewis gives advice that Scott Frank has taken to heart: "Then tell me one you already know."