Le guetteur

I'll admit, THE LOOKOUT starts off on a strong footing, with an expertly-choreographed piece of action charting the fall-out from a bank robbery. It harks back to the glory days of a similar sequence in HEAT, and has you on the edge of your seat as the minutes stretch out. Unfortunately, once this is over, the rest of the film never even comes close to that quality.

The direction of the film is to capture the disintegration of a group of bank robbers as they variously betray and bump each other off, while a dogged cop remains hot on their heels. And sadly, it's nowhere near as interesting or exciting as it sounds. This is one of those films that fails to feature even a single remotely sympathetic character, so that you wonder throughout why you're watching.

That wouldn't matter if the calibre of the script and film-making were exceptional, but the truth is that they aren't. There's a kind of humdrum, seen-it-all-before sense of weariness about the whole production, best summed up by Daniel Auteuil's yawn-worthy cop. The sub-plots are muddled and the characters uninteresting, so that by the time the end eventually comes around you'll be wondering why you're supposed to care.

I'm being generous, I know, but consider the misleading 5.something score for this movie to be an anomaly. I first thought this was a 'Res Dogs' copy but it developed into a thoughtful thriller with enough plot to make it compelling. The absence of an obvious 'hero' figure is, perhaps, an obstacle to begin, but a strong ensemble cast contributes to maintaining interest in the conclusion of the movie. The question at the heart of the film, if there is one, may lie with the motivation of the Policeman, rather than the identity of the traitor. A genuinely classy European thriller of a type that can no longer be considered rare ( tell No-One, The Secrets...) but which is well worth a look.

So many good actors in such a disappointing movie. It looks like it was written in parts by different writers who did not know what the predecessor had written. Characters are superficial and not credible. For the first time, I found Daniel Auteuil not playing well.

Freshly absorbing and intriguing, confusing at times, but eventually gets his goal: keep the edge of their seats. Occasionally gives the impression that the movie tries to tell two different stories or more and some subjects seem not to transcend in the development of the story... say that the ending was predictable, which is hard, I am of the idea that would have given more credibility to the story, the fact that criminals were in some Balkan region and not an Italian, however, at the end get absorb you. A good work of Michele Placido (aka Corrado Cattani), but can still offer something more, has the ability. Great collaboration of Mathieu Kassovitz (The Crimson Rivers).

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning

Detective Mattei (Daniel Auteuil) is on the trail of Vincent Kaminski (Mathieu Kassovitz) a rooftop sniper who took out a bunch of police officers while a daring bank robbery was in progress. But as he digs deeper in to the case, he uncovers even more dark, disturbing secrets.

It always seems to be the case that the continentals seem to make the better quality films, in terms of writing and general production values, and if their market doesn't get the best exposure, it certainly receives the greatest critical acclaim and there are quite a few who want to imitate it. They seem to come up with all the original ideas, that's for sure, and that's something Hollywood certainly can't claim. This familiar truth may be the case with The Lookout, even if it's not maybe the best example, perhaps.

It's an intricate, absorbing thriller, quite faultless but still unremarkable, but you can't help but get the feeling that someone, sometime will try and do it again. ***