I wake up, I take a shower...with soap.

[ImThatMick]

Has anyone else watched The Lookout? I rented it yesterday and while I thought it was a decent film and Gordon-Levitt's performance was excellent, I'm still trying to figure out what the BIG MASTERFUL TWIST advertised on the cover of the DVD was...It's been hyped up as a great twist by critics as well but I dont know what the hell they were watching because if there is a twist its so subtle its hardly noticable. Any insight?

[Just Spurplin]

Yeah, there was a discussion on this over at the IMDB site. No one could figure it out. Some people were convinced that the twist was that that Officer Donuts guy turned out to actually be a good, skilled cop, but that is just retarded.

My best guess would be the "twist" was that Chris was being used to rob a bank. It isn't really a twist to anyone now, since the previews all made it abundantly clear that it was a bank heist film. But, that quote of the amazing twist comes from a critic. Most critics see a movie weeks, even months before the movie comes out, a lot of times long before trailers for the movie come on TV. A lot of critics see a movie without knowing a single thing about the film (not even the most basic of plot summaries). So if you went into the movie with absolutely no knowledge of the film, it could be considered a twist when you find out what seems like a movie thats mostly a character study of a guy trying to get his life back together after an accident is actually about a guy being manipulated into a robbery.

Now thats just a guess, but Roger Ebert did the same thing with The Truman Show. He saw the movie and wrote the review before anyone knew anything about ithe movie, before there were even trailers for it on TV. In his review he talks about how there is a great surprise that he doesn't want to ruin for anyone. Then he later found out that, when the trailers started on TV, the film makers made absolutely no attempt to keep secret that Truman was on a TV show.



And about the movie, I love it now. I liked it when it came out. Good characters, great acting from Levitt, and really good acting from Jeff Daniels and Matthew Goode (I was shocked when I realized when I realized Goode was the same guy that played a rich, English goody boy in Match Point). I also liked that it was a thriller more focused and characters then cheap thrills and "ooohhhhh" moments. After watching it a couple more times on DVD I have started to love it. It is far from perfect, but I just like it so much more after seeing it a few times. And I think the writer-director Scott Frank is a serious new filmmaker to lookout for. On the directors commentary of the film, he constantly points out tiny flaws in his film making (should have been a close up here, should have had Chris alone in that shot), he mentions them all throughout. And watching it, I realize that they are all legitimate critiques, and even with all those mistakes, the film is still very, very good. I can't wait to see how great a film he makes when he knows about and corrects all those tiny errors.

[silverspade14]

I saw it in theaters and I thought it was really good.

[TheBigLebowski]

Jeff Daniels and the chick from Wedding Crashers kept me from falling asleep during this one. I saw the ending from a mile away so any "twist" was ruined by previews.

[Just Spurplin]

I saw the ending from a mile away so any "twist" was ruined by previews.

I'm curious, what ending did you see coming a mile away? All the things that happen are fairly random events that you can't really guess. The only thing you could predict was that Chris wins in the end, but that is hardly figuring out the ending. Theres only two possibilities, he wins or he loses. No serious detective work is required to figure out which one it is.

[ImThatMick]

I kept expecting there to be some kind of twist involving his notepad.