Directed by: Neil LaButeStarring: Samuel L. Jackson, Patrick Wilson, and Kerry Washington
Other Actors of Note: Ron Glass and Jay Hernandez
Plot: Abel Turner (Samuel L. Jackson) is a LAPD officer and strict single father of a 15 year old daughter and 10 year old son. He is also the self appointed neighborhood watch patrol in Lakeview Terrace. A young interracial couple, Chris (Patrick Wilson) and Lisa Mattson (Kerry Washington), move into their first home next door to Abel. Abel is raising his children by very strict standards, and he disapproves of any bad behavior in the neighborhood. Abel believes that Chris and Lisa are bad influences on his children, and he decides to harass them until they move. Taken from www.imdb.com.
The fact that Samuel L. Jackson stars primarily in cinematic abortions and spends far too much time discussing his hatred of avian reptiles always tends to make me forget that he really is one of the finest actors ever.
True he's had more bad movies but how can anyone forget "Pulp Fiction's" Jules Winnfield, or "Jackie Brown's" Ordell Robie, "Grand Theft Auto San Andreas'" Frank Tenpenny, or "Coach Carter." Besides, he's the hardest working man in Hollywood. Do you think it's easy never turning down a script?
"Lakeview Terrace" is just another thriller/drama in the pantheon of ambiguously tonal movies such as "Paparazzi", "Changing Lanes", and "Hard Candy." Fortunatley it's more the latter two than the former.
It's the story of Chris (Patrick Wilson) and Lisa (Kerry Washington) Mattson, a newly married interracial couple moving into their first home on Lakeview Terrace (Hey, that's the name of this movie!)
But their neighbor Abel Turner (Samuel L. Muthafuckin' Jackson) quickly tries to put them out of their home with several tactics to make them want to leave. Soon the situation escalates and shit be freaky.
There are only 3 performances in this film that are actually important enough to note. Let's start with the most inconsequential.
Kerry Washington, of "The Last King of Scotland" and "Fantastic Four", gives a decent albeit reined in performance as Lisa Mattson. She desperately wants to be a mother and it's implied that she stops taking her birth control pills without telling her husband so as to get pregnant. However, all of this kind of becomes a moot point and Lisa ends up being more of a background character than a proper lead.
Patrick Wilson, most notable for his performance in 2005's "Hard Candy", has gone from being beat up by a 13-year-old girl to pistol whipping Sam Jackson. Wilson showed a lot of good acting potential in "Hard Candy" but he really comes into his own here. He reminds me of a young Michael Keaton both in looks and actions and really serves as a solid adversary for Samuel L. Jackson and holds his own on the acting field as well. Chris is clearly bothered by how people treat him, being a white man married to a black woman, and is especially annoyed by Abel's behaviour. I hope to see more of Patrick Wilson in the future.
Then of course, there's Samuel L. Jackson. Abel Turner is a cross between the psychotic father Doyle Gibson that Jackson played in "Changing Lanes" and Denzel Washington's crooked cop Alonzo from "Training Day." Meaning that aside from being a racist nutjob, Abel is also a crooked asshole policeman. The look of outrage on his face when Abel sees that Kerry Washington is married to Patrick Wilson as opposed to Ron Glass, who actually turns out to be her father says everything. While it gets a bit tiresome, it's nice to see a movie that's not afraid to show that people of other races can be racist too.
I'm told that this film was penned by a playwright, and if this is true it really shows in this movie. The same sort of focus on the main characters, simplistic sets, and no nonsense storline that is usually seen in plays is shown here. There are no establishing shots and it's hard to get a good mental picture of what any area actually looks like.
What hurts the story the most, however, is the plot lines it shows only to leave untied. Abel's got more problems than just being a racist prick. He's an abusive man with questionable practices as a law officer and a father. The conflict between Abel and his children is left unresolved (though I guess you could say the ending sort of resolves it.) Also the problems between Chris and his father-in-law as well as Chris and Lisa over their unborn child never seem to resolve fully.
The story reeks of drama but gets so caught up in being a thriller that it never quite reaches its dramatic potential. This makes the tone of the film confusing and hard to get behind as even the film-makers seem to be unsure of what sort of movie they're making.
One of the finer notes of the film and my personal favorite was the backdrop of the California wildfire during the entire movie. The wildfire serves as a wonderful mcguffin, always looming over every scene as some sort of unseen menace and even in the final scenes of the movie it is downplayed as being the lesser of two evils in comparrison to Abel's horrible actions.
It's a movie with a lot of unrealized potential that could have been much better than it was. You won't find "Lakeview Terrace" to be unsatisfying but you'll walk away feeling like there was something missing.
I give "Lakeview Terrace" a 3 out of 5. It's worth seeing but you're not missing anything if you don't.
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