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Stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt
(best known as Tommy Solomon in the TV series Third Rock from the Sun), Jeff
Daniels, and a cast of other lesser known folks (not counting one of my personal
favorites, the lovely Carla Gugino 
)
Not your average movie in this genre, but very entertaining. What genre
would that be? Well, the Heist movie genre. A genre where a
robbery is being planned and will take place. Not a small robbery,
but a big one. Bank robbery, armored car, that sort of thing.
Something where millions of dollars will be hauled away from its supposedly
rightful place off to become someone else's bounty.
As a heist movie, the Lookout starts out incredibly slow.
Not as slowly as some I've seen, but not one that just jumps into the issue
of the robbery either. Instead, there's a more personal story going on and
it is that story that we get to begin the movie with. A personal story of
the main character, Chris Pratt. A high schooler that is out enjoying
a night with his date and another couple. Chris Pratt is
driving along, much too quickly, trying to impress his date by showing
her the fireflies that are lighting up the night sky out on an old country
road. Driving along at a high rate of speed without his headlights
on, Chris Pratt winds up crashing into a large piece of farm equipment
and the next we see of Chris Pratt approximately 4 years have
passed.
We are brought up to speed quickly on the fact that Chris Pratt suffered
severe head trauma and is impaired/disabled because of it. He has problems
with sequencing (keeping track of what events came before others during the day,
etc.), and can't do relatively simple tasks that others are able to do.
Chris Pratt's life is laid out before us and we see the difficulties of
how a disabled person would live their life. How difficult little things
that we all take for granted are for someone that has problems with their brain
functions. There is enough of Chris Pratt's intellect left to cause him to
feel frustrated by his disability and also enough to let him live an almost
normal life, including working as a janitor in a small bank in a small farm
town.
We meet other people that Chris Pratt works with and/or lives with,
including a blind, somewhat obnoxious, roommate played by Jeff Daniels.
The roommate says things to various women and talks about himself and Chris
Pratt in ways that could be annoying and are definitely not politically
correct. Eventually those things, and others that come from pressures
of acquaintances that befriend Chris Pratt push him to go along with a
planned bank robbery of the bank that he works for. Chris Pratt will
become the inside man, or actually, to be precise, the most important
person for the job: The Lookout.
I'll stop with the plot points there, but suffice it to say I've left
out many details, details that will be very enjoyable to sit and watch if you
take the time to rent this film, or perhaps buy the DVD (or other disc format
video).
In my case, I went for a rental in the Blu-ray format since this was a new
release and I've wanted to check out the Blu-ray format a bit. The
Blu-ray transfer for this one looked very good. More impressive than the
relatively disappointing Wild Hogs (in the video area) that I had also rented
and watched over the last several days (sorry, no quick review or comments about
that movie other than an expression of the desire to get back the 90 minutes,
give or take, of my life that was wasted watching that movie). Also much
more impressive in the story line and entertainment area 
.
Rated R for the usual reasons (including language). Just over 100
minutes long. Well worth a rental if you can snag it.
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