Samuel L Jackson Month - Mini Review: Lakeview Terrace

It’s Samuel L Jackson month

And this time we’re looking at Lakeview Terrace, with a spectacular (compared to the last one anyway with a 45% rating on rotten tomatoes, a 6.1 IMdB rating and impressively a 4/4 review from Roger Ebert) What’s my take? Well click the link (if you haven’t already) and we’ll find out

So we have a couple named Chris (who is white) and Lisa Mattson (who is Black) (Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington) (and before you complain about me mentioning their races, it’s important to the plot) they move into a new area and are the neighbour of a police officer named Abel Turner (Samuel L Jackson) I’ll be frank, Abel Turner is a racist and can’t stand the idea of a white guy and a black woman being together.

Initially it seems like he’s retaliating for various ways they’ve wronged him (leaving cigarettes on the lawn, letting his children see them in the pool etc) but later on it becomes apparent that he’s doing anything possible to force them to leave, leading to injuries, death and disaster, sounds like a typical thriller to me.

So… what do I think of this? Honestly, I don’t like this movie much. For me, you need a character to root for and honestly I have no idea who this character is. It’s clearly not the sociopathic, overly violent, criminal beating, child abusing, gun-toting asshole Jackson’s playing.

But then Chris is a smoking, throwing the cigarettes into the neighbour’s garden, have sex outside, overly reliant on planning, incapable of letting his wife do anything yet barely able to stand up to her family, somewhat petty and cowardly asshole.

And his wife is a person who deliberately avoids pills to stop her becoming pregnant despite not consenting with her husband, allows a child to remain in her house despite not having parental consent and does nothing but shriek in the closing minutes, also did I mention having sex outside?

My point is, none of these characters are all that likeable so… why should I care how this situation resolves itself? Unlikable characters can work if there’s an arc to them but honestly I feel Chris gets worse and worse until like 10 minutes before the end. That’s not how an arc works.

Then there’s the fact the tone of the movie is just so dour, it’s not Arena level dour, but it’s not a fun movie to watch and for me, it’s not entertaining either.

Rating 40/100

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Images/clips used in this review are from Lakeview Terrace and Avengers Assemble (The Avengers) and belong to their respective owners. All images in this review are subject to fair use