"The Lookout" is one of those heist movies where all of the pieces of a great movie are there, but something just doesn't connect. I don't know exactly what it was missing - maybe it was originality, maybe it was more compelling characters, maybe it was a good editor - I cannot really put my finger on it. What I do know however is that I would never watch it again.
The opening sequence is like so many in films - teens carelessly driving at night which leads to a car accident. The driver, a hockey star, ends up costing at least one of his friends their life, and injuries to himself and another. These careless actions manifest demons that haunt him as he moves on with his life, working overnight at a bank doing the cleaning for a rural branch. Suffering from a massive head injury of his own, he relies on a pad of step-by-step things to do to guide him through his days. His problems make him an easy target when a group of bank robbers are planning a heist and think they can use him as their way in.
I have complained before about the lack of likable characters in some of my movie selections, and this one suffers from that as well. Some of the fun in movies like "Oceans 11" or the classic "The Sting" is that viewers root for the bank robbers. In this film, I wanted them all to end up dead (I won't say how that ends up). I also didn't care if the "heroes" ended up dead either - they just didn't make an impression on me. The end of the film also tries to wrap things up way too quickly. So for these errors, I will rob "The Lookout" of six stars, and leave it with my rating of 4.
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