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"Once upon a time, I woke up."

Screened at the SXSW Film Festival

An air of melancholy pervades Scott Frank's remarkable The Lookout, a heist film where the heist is a red herring, and a tender, insightful character study forms the core. In the middle of a hectic festival day, it made time stop, and sent me into a contemplative haze. Though purporting to be an entry into a genre that usually values cleverness and kineticism for their own sakes, the movie takes the time to focus on its characters, and forsakes plot twists for sadness and heartbreak. It's one of my favorite films of the year.

The tragedy at the center of The Lookout is a man who went from being able to do virtually anything to being able to do nothing. An act of teenage foolishness sends high school star Chris Pratt (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and three friends careening into a stopped train, leaving Chris without basic short-term memory or coordination, dependent on a little notebook where he writes himself reminders and "sequences" his day. He lives with a blind 1-800-Flowers operator (Jeff Daniels) and works as a night-time janitor in a bank; his family and most of his co-workers and friends, such as he has, condescend to him in an effort to be understanding; his caseworker (Carla Gugino) wonders why there are no women in his life. Sometimes, standing in front of the mirror in the morning, he starts to cry. So when, four years after the accident, an old school (Matthew Goode) "runs into" Chris at a bar and unveils a plan that, he promises, will give him at least a vestige of his life back ("whoever has the money, has the power"), he is tempted almost despite himself.

Frank finds a window into his protagonist's soul. The film doesn't condescend to him like the characters do; he's lost everything he had taken for granted, and his rage, his anger, his depression are palpable. What he discovers, and the way he ultimately comes around, are Frank's most powerful and moving insights here. The heist plot -- which, frankly, could have been handled better -- is merely a vehicle for this, which is perhaps why the plot unfolds straightforwardly, without time jumps, chronological breaks, or other flashy structural gimmicks.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt, a truly staggering talent, follows up Brick by creating another wholly compelling character -- sad, a little mysterious, and ultimately heroic. And Scott Frank, one of the best-regarded Hollywood screenwriters, shows that he can transcend Elmore Leonard novels and even Spielberg extravaganzas. This is a minor-key gem, molding the trappings of the heist flick genre for its own, much higher ends. I've been thinking about it nonstop since I saw it.

-- Some comments after a second viewing: I thought that if I watched the film again, outside of the five-movie-a-day festival hysteria, I might like it even more. In fact, its flaws came into sharper relief: Frank really doesn't do justice to the heist itself, and the way it resolves just isn't terribly convincing or satisfying. And though I still love the final voiceover and freezeframe, I had been playing a different version back in my head after seeing the film at SXSW, and I like mine better. But at the same time, I found the protagonist an even more heartbreaking figure, particularly since I realized that though he's clearly a good guy, he was kind of an asshole when he was a golden boy -- listen carefully to Luvlee's account of his hockey hijinks, and specifically of how he slashed an opposing player because he knew it was the last outing of the season and he wouldn't have to face the ordinary consequence of sitting out the next game. The movie is all about brutal consequences, and this time around, when Pratt drives away from the scene of the crime and flashes back to the accident, I nearly burst into tears. So the second viewing cut both ways, and I think my initial grade was about right.

--Eugene Novikov