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.

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. ***

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.

It had to happen: After watching many good french crime films, I found the first stinker. It's the worst kind of film, thinking it's smart when it's not. The lookout is just plain stupid. The plot has so many holes that it looks like swiss cheese. The film is totally unbalanced, trying to be many things at once: a cop film, a crime film about bank robbers, a serial killer film, a jail film and even a whodunit. The characters are weak and cliché. It sucks because the cast was good. I wonder why Daniel Auteuil made this awful film. He deserves better. I was misled by Auteuil and Placido (Romanzo Criminale is highly recommended). But why they turned this mockery of a script into a film is just beyond me. I hope the screenwriters didn't give up their day jobs.

Daniel Auteuil is one of the best actors of his generation and beyond worldwide. He not only resembles phisically to Robert DeNiro but his talent as an actor also shows huge resemblance to DeNiro's talent. Thus it is worth watching him in every role he plays. And he is one of the most versatile actors playing cops, historic figures, everymens and you name it. This film is a thriller worth watching it.