You mustn’t remember this

CAN’T LOOK BACK: Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Matthew Goode

by MARK SLUTSKY

A movie about an emotionally damaged man with a violent incident in his past he can’t quite recall, thanks to short-term memory damage that compels him to leave notes for himself just to make it through the day, an impairment that’s taken advantage of by unscrupulous criminals—we’re talking about Memento, right? Well, we could be, but we could just as easily be discussing The Lookout, a new thriller from screenwriter Scott Frank (Out of Sight), making his directorial debut, a movie that suffers from slow pacing and inevitable, unflattering comparisons to other, better movies.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt, of Third Rock From the Sun and last year’s teen neo-noir Brick, plays Chris Pratt, a former high school sports star who suffers brain damage after recklessly causing a car accident. Now his memory’s shot and he spends his days in rehabilitation and hanging with blind roomie Jeff Daniels, and his nights working as a janitor in a bank in the heart of sleepy, snowy, small-town Kansas.

At a bar one night, he meets the friendly, creepy Gary Spargo (Matthew Goode), who happens to be the second asthmatic bad guy in recent months after Casino Royale’s le Chiffre. It becomes clear that the oily dude, along with foxy Isla Fisher, is seducing our not-all-there hero into helping his crew out with a bank heist, and the question becomes, I suppose, whether Gordon-Levitt can figure out his predicament and what exactly he’s going to do about it.

I say “I suppose” because it’s never entirely clear what the stakes are. This is a strangely sloppy movie. Take Fisher’s character, who’s clearly set up as a sympathetic femme fatale who develops feelings for her patsy; after all that, she disappears from the movie halfway through and doesn’t figure into the plot at all.

It’s hard to get invested in this totally overcooked story of redemption, especially as Gordon-Levitt plays his role with an unmistakably, and distractingly, Keanu-like mien. The movie is a pointlessly slow burn, and it’s hard not to think of other films that mined the same ground more effectively: Memento, Fargo, A Simple Plan. For a movie about the reality-altering effects of memory impairment, a subject with such potential for cinematic drama and suspense, The Lookout is sadly forgettable.

The Lookout opens this Friday, March 30

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