Lakeview Terrace

I am not sure if I am just dense or maybe I thought it would possible to have not have it be a big deal, but I was not expecting this movie to make such a big deal about the interracial coupling. I probably should have expected it, but I never did and it turns out to be the main focus of the movie overall. In fact, race is pretty much the only thing about the movie. I am sure there will be movies that exist where a black and white relationship can exist on screen without it being a main point of the story, but this is clearly not that movie. Lakeview Terrace is certainly out to show that we have not come as far as we would like to think as a country.

Chris(Patrick Wilson) and Lisa(Kerry Washington)are a young married couple who have just purchased their first house in an upper scale gated community. They seem very happy and progressive as Chris drives a Prius and they want to help the world. Their next door neighbor is a cop, Abel Turner(Samuel L. Jackson)and Turner has two kids. It is very obvious from opening moments that Abel is not what he seems. Within moments of realizing his new neighbors are an inter racial couple, Abel has decided to make their lives miserable. It starts off as only slightly menacing but before the movie is over, it has become a full fledged illegal harassment. We do spend a little time with Abel on his job, and it is clear he is an unstable man. At home he is not much different. He rules his two children with an iron fist, even slapping his 15 yr old daughter in the most chilling and uncomfortable scene in the movie. Chris, at first, tries to reason with Abel, then he defies him, then he tries to exact his revenge on him. Throughout the film, Lisa, thinks Chris is maybe stereotyping the black man. Lisa also wants a child and Chris isn't ready, but she takes matters into her own hand. Lisa's dad appears to hate Chris and while we never meet Chris' family, Lisa is sure they hate her. This disharmony starts to eat away at the once happy couple.

Lakeview Terrace is a movie that was mishandled at the promotional level. The previews make the movie out to be this over-the-top nonsense with fires and yelling and what-not, but it really is not that kind of movie, until the end. Set against a backdrop of a Southern California fire, Lakeview Terrace is an interesting movie for the first 75% before falling into the trap of revenge style flicks. It sets up the premise nicely and manages to be pretty engrossing, mostly due to Sam Jackson and Patrick Wilson. Both men are strong, although Wilson seems a bit over-matched, but who isn't next to Jackson as a bad ass. Director Neil Labute, known for more intimate character dramas, does a pretty good job of keeping the movie intimate even when the script calls for the movie to get out of control. He does lose control of the picture, but that is mostly a script issue. The first third plays a lot more light hearted, more mischievous than menacing, and then at a very specific moment the movie has a tonal shift that sends it straight into a very intense drama.

My biggest complaint, other than the out of control ending, is that Kerry Washington never gets the chance to confront her neighbor/tormentor. In a movie that is all about how hard it is for a white guy and a black girl to be together, it would have been nice if the black female got to stand up for herself to her black attacker. Washington is a strong actress and this part was just calling for her own big scene. Sadly, they never give it to her. Of course, there is the obvious symbol/metaphor of the big fire that seems to be closing in on Lakeview Terrace as the intensity ignites, until the climax is had as the fires are right on top of the terrace. It seems a little on the nose, but I guess it works. It is nice to have fires blazing behind Jackson as he plots on how to now kill his neighbors. I was disappointed in the ending as it left me with a big question and a concern for any children.

Movies will often try and humanize the villain and Lakeview Terrace tries and fails at it. They give Abel a wife who was killed in a car accident and leave him with 2 kids, but it isn't enough for me to feel sympathetic to him. He hates this couple for seemingly no logical reason and he seems to have no regard for the well being of his children, so why did they give him a dead wife? Why try to humanize a character that is going to spin so far out of control. Jackson was in another movie that had a similar idea, Changing Lanes. It was a movie about two good people who set each other off into a tail spin of revenge, but in that movie, both characters were sympathetic and you could see why they went where they went. Here, Jackson is evil just because he is supposed to be evil.

Lakeview Terrace offers up some interesting insights to race of all kinds and doesn't back off of making politically incorrect notions of race, but when it abandons that idea, it falters and leaves the audience with the wrong kinds of questions. The male performances are strong, but the female lead is left with little to do but be scared. I didn't expect anything out of the movie, so I was pleasantly surprised, but once they hooked me, I wish they did more to reel me in.

Final Grade: C+