I was told the other day that I shouldn’t say anything too nice about the new thriller Lakeview Terrace. Not because it doesn’t deserve a few kudos (which it does), but more because actor Samuel L. Jackson should be taken to task for both playing another in a long line of Angry Black Men as well as for his seeming to take every single part offered his way now matter how silly or insignificant.

Samuel L. Jackson in Screen Gems' Lakeside Terrace

While I understand where the comments came from, I can’t help but disagree that those should color my opinions about either the actor’s performance or the film it is given in. The simple fact is that, while the character of disgruntled and lonely single father and Los Angeles police officer Abel Turner isn’t a new one for Jackson, that doesn’t make his work any less sensational. In fact, this could arguably be his best performance in ages, the actor diving so far beneath the character’s self-destructive surface it was impossible for me not to come away impressed.

What I can rail against is the fact the obsession by director Neil LaBute (In the Company of Men) and writers David Loughery (Star Trek V: The Final Frontier) and Howard Korder (Stealing Sinatra) to turn their solid three-hanky tragic melodrama into a ham-fisted and highly annoying thriller in the same vein as Unlawful Entry or Pacific Heights completely ruins the picture. Essentially, what they do is sabotage their own production, and what could have been a solid film about regret, loss, race and marriage instead transforms into a liturgy of idiocies and clichés that totally boggle the mind.

The film follows the travails of Chris and Lisa Mattson (Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington), an interracial couple blissfully excited about becoming home owners for the very first time. Not so thrilled is their neighbor, Abel. His wife dead in a tragic accident three years prior, he’s been forced to raise his two kids all on his lonesome and the last thing he wants is some young couple with progressive ideas teaching them things he doesn’t think they should know.

But the animosity goes deeper than that. Abel harbors a secret that is slowly tearing him apart, both at home and on the job and he sees Chris and Lisa as symbols of all that’s gone wrong in his life. As fury builds, all he knows is that he wants the both of them gone, and little by little and inch by inch he’s going to do all that he can to make sure it happens one way or another.

If this was a movie about a good man slowly destroying himself because of his own pent-up hate and self-loathing I might very well be calling Lakeview Terrace one of the year’s best motion pictures. The simple fact is, much of this story fits right inside LaBute's well-honed darkly cynical and inhumanly combustible wheelhouse, elements of Nurse Betty, Your Friends and Neighbors and The Shape of Things all present and then some.

The problem is, the filmmakers aren’t content to let their film be “just” a drama, aren’t satisfied letting the characters evolve into tragic devastation all on their lonesome. Instead, they are compelled to forcefeed a maudlin and highly regrettable thriller into the mixture that just doesn’t work. These moments feel ill at ease with the rest of the story, never seamlessly fitting the plot’s theatrical structure in a way that's honest or true.

For a while this problem doesn’t matter. LaBute handles things with elegantly icy precision, the performances elictrifying things while Rogier Stoffers’ (Distubia) sublime photography glides along with such sophisticatedly smooth nuance the film starts to feel like an uncomforting nightmare impossible to shake. I was glued to my seat wondering what was going to happen next, the haze of smoke from some California forest fires not the only ominous danger lurking in the horizon worth keeping an eye on.

Then come the final twenty or so minutes where everything literally comes crashing apart. The pieces of this that never quite work suddenly are forced front and center, and whether I liked it or not guns were going to fire and shouts were going to echo and all I could think to do while they did so was yawn. The basic truth is that the climax is an absolute waste of money, time and intelligence, and for a director as talented as LaBute for him to let things disintegrate so completely this truly is a borderline disgrace. 

Yet, none of that should diminish what Jackson is able to accomplish. Sure he’s been in way too much stuff (good, bad and ugly) this year. Yes he’s played variations on this character more than a couple of times before. But that doesn’t make the performance any less wondrous, and while Lakeview Terrace is certainly a property worth foreclosing on I’d still give the actor the benefit of the doubt any old day of the week and then some.

Film Rating: êê (out of 4) 

Additional Links:

-  Lakeview Terrace Theatrical Trailer