THE POPCORN REEL FILM REVIEW/"Lakeview Terrace"
Through dark-colored glasses: Samuel L. Jackson as
LAPD Detective Abel Turner in Neil LaBute's "Lakeview Terrace", which opens
today in the U.S. and Canada. (Photo: Sony Pictures)
In The Hills And Valleys Of Los Angeles, The
Pain Of Abel's Cain
By Omar P.L. Moore/September 19, 2008
"Lakeside Terrace" has fire, brimstone and plenty of cliches -- biblical and otherwise -- to keep things half interesting but mainly the cliches are the very things that overwhelm any sincere attempt to present a credible narrative about a married couple -- a black woman (Kerry Washington) and a white man (Patrick Wilson) who move in next door to a bitter, cynical and racist cop (Samuel L. Jackson). Over the years film director Neil LaBute's celluloid males have been largely misanthropic and anti-social with a few exceptions, but with "Lakeview Terrace" Mr. LaBute is back in familiar territory, with protagonist Abel Turner (note the not-so accidental first name), a veteran officer in the Los Angeles Police Department who has lost his wife to the afterlife and has never fully recovered from it.
Abel's personal tragedies are deeply embedded in his bigotry and racism but unlike Mr. LaBute's collection of male self-loathers, the director has over-stacked the deck against Mr. Jackson, rendering Abel a cardboard cutout instead of a complex creation. Considering that Mr. Jackson is an adept actor who manages in some moments to make Abel charismatic and humorous, the Academy Award-nominee hardly deserves the script he reads from. Abel is a relentlessly rigid law-and-order figure who would have shoved aside his fellow L.A. officers to be the nightstick-wielding ringleader in the 1991 police beating of Rodney King. Aside from the twisted humor and racial double-entendres, Mr. Jackson fuels the contradictory Abel with some paroxysms of regret -- those pangs of remorse that sting him in a few of his many isolated moments, but the screenplay delivers even more injustice to Abel than Abel himself does, making Mr. Jackson's character little more than a raving paranoid lunatic with less than nothing to keep him busy except minding the business of his new neighbors. Abel's own kids don't exactly like him. His fellow officers pity him. And he's far worse than a bad apple. And by living in Lakeview Terrace (it's called Lakeview Circle in the film itself) he's not all that far from the San Fernando Valley or from Simi Valley, where the trial of acquittal of Mr. King's assailants was held in 1992.
So with all this said, there had better be a darn good reason for Abel to "go off" on Chris (Mr. Wilson) and Lisa Mattson (Ms. Washington), right?
Right?
Well, in Abel there really isn't enough ammunition other than seething hate and perhaps even envy, as he wars with the demons within himself, battling a would-be Cain in Chris in a city symbolic for its sprawl, pretension and isolationist balkanizations -- some wouldn't dream of driving near East L.A. or on a highway that even connects to South Central L.A. One would think that unspoken boundaries are a territory that would serve Mr. LaBute well, but he instead manages to squeeze less juice from the dynamics at play on this sociological chessboard than an inexperienced milker of a cow. There are problems too with David Loughery and Howard Korder's screenplay and its approach to Chris and Lisa. The assumption is that every (older) black man (well, at least Lisa's father and Abel) can't seem to stand the sight of them together (another weak assumption or generalization about racial or sex group member responses to interracial dating or marriage in the U.S.), while both spouses are deceptive towards each other and their marital discord rises. Plot points are introduced and then dropped in an attempt to cultivate dramatic tension between Chris and Lisa as well as Abel that not only doesn't arrive but is then swamped by a conclusion that spirals far beyond the scope of this light treatment of a heavy subject. You can see it coming, and from galaxies away.
Even when there are moments of tension, created mostly by Mr. Jackson, there isn't enough drama from the dilemmas and potential issues of race and racism experienced by Chris and Lisa to make for as interesting a film as "Jungle Fever" (also featuring Mr. Jackson), which had numerous layers and complexities that "Lakeview Terrace" either ignores or employs throwaway lines on in an attempt to raise ire or be provocative for provocation's sake. As a police officer Abel is a racist not only due to his hateful rhetoric but also because he has the power to enforce the laws behind his own bigotry, institutionalizing his personal hatreds. ("You don't want to live near the people you're arresting," he utters at one point.) Abel Turner is the West Coast cousin to New York Police Detective Mike Brennan (played by Nick Nolte) in Sidney Lumet's hugely-underrated "Q&A" (1990), except in that film Mr. Nolte's Brennan had power as well as influence over his minions who were hanging on his every word. Though like Brennan an equal opportunity hater, Turner by contrast has no power at all, and consequently no respect -- from anyone.
Ultimately, where Mr. LaBute's film is concerned, the danger is that the director via the absurd machinations of his weakly-drawn lead character either trivializes or risks trivializing the issues of race and racism -- or at least its complexities and nuances -- by not making some of the film's themes, issues or characters more compelling or gray. Yet most telling is that Mr. LaBute (director of such films as "In The Company Of Men", "Nurse Betty", "Possession") is too smart for his own film, as is Mr. Jackson. So why this mistake by the "Lake"?
"Lakeview Terrace" plays as a more upscale cousin to a film thirteen years prior ("White Man's Burden", which was directed by Desmond Nakano, an American of Japanese heritage.) As poor a film as that was, Mr. Nakano, whose film was about a reversed American society where blacks had the economic and institutional power to be racist and dominant whereas whites like John Travolta's character were economically and politically powerless, seemed to at least put his finger on an uneasy pulse. Here, Mr. LaBute tosses out scenarios and hopes the audience will be hooked on them but it's a safe bet that 30 minutes from the end people may be wishing to watch "Training Day", which even at its lowest ebb was a better film with stronger performances, more complex and layered ala Denzel Washington's Oscar-winning role as Alonzo Harris -- than most of "Lakeview Terrace" will ever be.
"Lakeview Terrace" is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for intense thematic material, violence, sexuality, language and some drug references. The film's duration is one hour and 46 minutes.
Copyright The Popcorn Reel. PopcornReel.com. 2008. All Rights Reserved.
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By Omar P.L. Moore/September 19, 2008
"Lakeside Terrace" has fire, brimstone and plenty of cliches -- biblical and otherwise -- to keep things half interesting but mainly the cliches are the very things that overwhelm any sincere attempt to present a credible narrative about a married couple -- a black woman (Kerry Washington) and a white man (Patrick Wilson) who move in next door to a bitter, cynical and racist cop (Samuel L. Jackson). Over the years film director Neil LaBute's celluloid males have been largely misanthropic and anti-social with a few exceptions, but with "Lakeview Terrace" Mr. LaBute is back in familiar territory, with protagonist Abel Turner (note the not-so accidental first name), a veteran officer in the Los Angeles Police Department who has lost his wife to the afterlife and has never fully recovered from it.
Abel's personal tragedies are deeply embedded in his bigotry and racism but unlike Mr. LaBute's collection of male self-loathers, the director has over-stacked the deck against Mr. Jackson, rendering Abel a cardboard cutout instead of a complex creation. Considering that Mr. Jackson is an adept actor who manages in some moments to make Abel charismatic and humorous, the Academy Award-nominee hardly deserves the script he reads from. Abel is a relentlessly rigid law-and-order figure who would have shoved aside his fellow L.A. officers to be the nightstick-wielding ringleader in the 1991 police beating of Rodney King. Aside from the twisted humor and racial double-entendres, Mr. Jackson fuels the contradictory Abel with some paroxysms of regret -- those pangs of remorse that sting him in a few of his many isolated moments, but the screenplay delivers even more injustice to Abel than Abel himself does, making Mr. Jackson's character little more than a raving paranoid lunatic with less than nothing to keep him busy except minding the business of his new neighbors. Abel's own kids don't exactly like him. His fellow officers pity him. And he's far worse than a bad apple. And by living in Lakeview Terrace (it's called Lakeview Circle in the film itself) he's not all that far from the San Fernando Valley or from Simi Valley, where the trial of acquittal of Mr. King's assailants was held in 1992.
So with all this said, there had better be a darn good reason for Abel to "go off" on Chris (Mr. Wilson) and Lisa Mattson (Ms. Washington), right?
Right?
Well, in Abel there really isn't enough ammunition other than seething hate and perhaps even envy, as he wars with the demons within himself, battling a would-be Cain in Chris in a city symbolic for its sprawl, pretension and isolationist balkanizations -- some wouldn't dream of driving near East L.A. or on a highway that even connects to South Central L.A. One would think that unspoken boundaries are a territory that would serve Mr. LaBute well, but he instead manages to squeeze less juice from the dynamics at play on this sociological chessboard than an inexperienced milker of a cow. There are problems too with David Loughery and Howard Korder's screenplay and its approach to Chris and Lisa. The assumption is that every (older) black man (well, at least Lisa's father and Abel) can't seem to stand the sight of them together (another weak assumption or generalization about racial or sex group member responses to interracial dating or marriage in the U.S.), while both spouses are deceptive towards each other and their marital discord rises. Plot points are introduced and then dropped in an attempt to cultivate dramatic tension between Chris and Lisa as well as Abel that not only doesn't arrive but is then swamped by a conclusion that spirals far beyond the scope of this light treatment of a heavy subject. You can see it coming, and from galaxies away.
Even when there are moments of tension, created mostly by Mr. Jackson, there isn't enough drama from the dilemmas and potential issues of race and racism experienced by Chris and Lisa to make for as interesting a film as "Jungle Fever" (also featuring Mr. Jackson), which had numerous layers and complexities that "Lakeview Terrace" either ignores or employs throwaway lines on in an attempt to raise ire or be provocative for provocation's sake. As a police officer Abel is a racist not only due to his hateful rhetoric but also because he has the power to enforce the laws behind his own bigotry, institutionalizing his personal hatreds. ("You don't want to live near the people you're arresting," he utters at one point.) Abel Turner is the West Coast cousin to New York Police Detective Mike Brennan (played by Nick Nolte) in Sidney Lumet's hugely-underrated "Q&A" (1990), except in that film Mr. Nolte's Brennan had power as well as influence over his minions who were hanging on his every word. Though like Brennan an equal opportunity hater, Turner by contrast has no power at all, and consequently no respect -- from anyone.
Ultimately, where Mr. LaBute's film is concerned, the danger is that the director via the absurd machinations of his weakly-drawn lead character either trivializes or risks trivializing the issues of race and racism -- or at least its complexities and nuances -- by not making some of the film's themes, issues or characters more compelling or gray. Yet most telling is that Mr. LaBute (director of such films as "In The Company Of Men", "Nurse Betty", "Possession") is too smart for his own film, as is Mr. Jackson. So why this mistake by the "Lake"?
"Lakeview Terrace" plays as a more upscale cousin to a film thirteen years prior ("White Man's Burden", which was directed by Desmond Nakano, an American of Japanese heritage.) As poor a film as that was, Mr. Nakano, whose film was about a reversed American society where blacks had the economic and institutional power to be racist and dominant whereas whites like John Travolta's character were economically and politically powerless, seemed to at least put his finger on an uneasy pulse. Here, Mr. LaBute tosses out scenarios and hopes the audience will be hooked on them but it's a safe bet that 30 minutes from the end people may be wishing to watch "Training Day", which even at its lowest ebb was a better film with stronger performances, more complex and layered ala Denzel Washington's Oscar-winning role as Alonzo Harris -- than most of "Lakeview Terrace" will ever be.
"Lakeview Terrace" is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for intense thematic material, violence, sexuality, language and some drug references. The film's duration is one hour and 46 minutes.
Copyright The Popcorn Reel. PopcornReel.com. 2008. All Rights Reserved.
printer friendly