In 2003, in Kansas, the popular and reckless high school hockey player Chris Pratt (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) goes to a party with his girlfriend and two friends on the backseat of his convertible through the old Route 24. In a moment, he turns the headlights off to admire the bright sky and has a tragic car crash. Four years later, his head injury still affects his memories and he uses a notebook to help him to recall his activities. He is no longer admired and works as night janitor in the Noel State Bank & Trust due to his mental incapacitation. He lives with his only friend, the blind Lewis (Jeff Daniels) that he met while recovering in a medical center, and helps him in the daily activities. When he meets Gary Spargo (Matthew Goode) in a bar, he is introduced to the sexy Luvlee (Isla Fisher) and has sex with her after a long period of abstinence. Chris gets closer to Gary, and sooner he is invited to help his gang to rob the Noel Bank. Chris is upset with his lifestyle and sees the chance to change his life, convinced that whoever has the money has the power.

"The Lookout" is an excellent dramatic thriller, in spite of the common theme "bank heist. The screenplay builds perfectly the lead character Christopher Pratt from a successful and promising teenager to a frustrated mentally incapacitated and with remorse and guilty complex young man, with a total lack of professional perspectives and no-longer successful with women. The result is quite predictable, but the way the plot is disclose is amazing. The resemblance of the talented actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt with the recently deceased Heath Ledger is impressive. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): Not Available

Scott Frank's The Lookout is a film where every turn of plot, exchange of dialogue, set piece and stylistic choice just seems to mesh flawlessly, resulting in a package that's nearly as perfect as you can get. Part psychological character study, part crime thriller, sewn together lovingly by threads of brilliantly written, intelligent interpersonal drama that seems lived in, the writer never uses the pen to pander nor patronize, but provides well drawn, realistic human beings who sound like actual people and not archetypes dwelling within the pages, never fully realized. Joseph Gordon Levitt plays Chris Pratt (not actual Chris Pratt lol) a young hotshot who becomes the victim of his own cocky, self destructive behaviour. After a horrific car accident that was entirely his fault, his girlfriend is left maimed and he a busted up shell of his former self, saddled with bushels of brain damage and the inability to cohesively live his day to day life the way he did before. It's some sort of synapse frying neurological scarring that's never fully explained, but the symptoms are clearly and fascinatingly outlined in a way that no other film has really tried before. He's left somewhat adrift in life, naively attracted to his foxy psychiatrist (Carla Gugino), misunderstood by his parents (Bruce McGill & Alberta Watson), and cared for by his eccentric, blind and motor-mouthed roommate (Jeff Daniels, a standout as always). He happens to be from a small midwestern town though, and in movie land these burgs are almost always filled with schemes, heists, double crosses and feed store robberies. 'Bro seduced' by an equally suave and shady dude (Matthew Goode, whose work here lives up to that surname and then some), Chris is shanghaied into assisting in the hold up of the very bank he works at, and soon the kind of hell that would make the Coen brothers applaud breaks loose. Everything makes sense though, the jigsaw pieces of the narrative nestling flush against one another, not a beat feeling out of place or in danger of derailing the whole thing. That's not the easiest thing to achieve, especially in a taught running time that clocks in under two hours and still manages to feel substantial. Levitt is terrific, a guy who used to be in control, used to be revered as the alpha who takes care of things, his condition worsened by the knowledge that people know full well how broken he is. The stakes are inherently high when someone that set back by life must navigate their way through the complex ins and outs of pulling off a bank heist. One hell of a film.

Dull and dreary. Go watch your sink, full of dishwater, way more entertaining. Go watch a dull grey view from the window, way more entertaining. Watch a tap run, way more entertaining. By now you should be able to catch my drift. Such a flat, boring, pointless movie. Why did such good actors do it? Beggars belief.