Lakeview Terrace

this has to be the most annoying character Samuel .L Jackson has ever played

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STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning Chris (Patrick Wilson) and Lisa (Kerry Washington) are a young, mixed race couple who have brought their first house in a nice little suburb in Los Angeles. However, one of their neighbours is strict single father and veteran police officer Abel Turner (Samuel L. Jackson) who is one of a few who takes oddly to their inter-racial coupling and who is also carrying his own demons. As he becomes increasingly aggressive and anti-social towards them, it plunges them all into a deadly game which could destroy all their lives. This suburban thriller by Neil LaBute appeared out of nowhere towards the end of last year with little in the way of publicity. But it's made an impression on a lot of other critics and I was pleasantly surprised too. It's an old fashioned sort of thriller, in the vein of films like Pacific Heights with Michael Keaton or Single White Female, that of the warped stranger who starts to interfere psychotically with the lead characters. Blissfully free of any modern fast cuts or flashy editing, it takes you back to a time when thrillers had a dash of inspiration and flair. As the man carrying the film, Samuel L. Jackson turns in an excellent performance as the protagonist of the tale, constantly giving his victims flourishes of false hope then unnervingly reverting back to his unpleasantness and conceitedness. This may not make it the most pleasant of films to watch, but the film never lets up on the suspense and keeps you hooked till the end, eager for a revelation of what motivates Jackson's hatred and how it will impact on his victims and what it will drive them to do. ****

In California, the Caucasian Chris Mattson (Patrick Wilson) and his Afro-American wife Lisa Mattson (Kerry Washington) move to a house in a safe compound. The racist and dysfunctional next door neighbor is an abusive LAPD Officer Abel Turner (Samuel L. Jackson) that feels uncomfortable with the interregional relationship of the newcomers and transforms their lives in Hell on Earth. The predictable and flawed "Lakeview Terrace" is not totally bad, but is the type of movie that will be broadcasted on TV in a Saturday night tin a couple of years. However, for a Neil LaBute film, this commercial movie is a great deception. After the promising debut with "In the Company of Men" and the awful remake of "The Wicker Man", Neil LaBute falls downhill with the weak movie. My vote is five. Title (Brazil): "O Vizinho" ("The Neighbor")

I went to see this movie tonight, first of all I like Samuel L Jackson, whenever you go to watch his films you expect to see a good guy but this movie will give you a different feeling on this new character. From the films trailer you can kind of see Samuel L. Jackson as been picked to play the bad and rough cop in this film. Yes the film has a few racists one liners but at the end of the day it's the fact that this kind of thing really does happen in the world so that's what makes you take this film seriously instead of nip picking at the racism. The acting in this films i great, the plot works perfectly, a great thriller, probably the best thriller this year in my eyes. I just want to point out i'm not racist in any way at all, trust me there have been films with a lot more racism in than this but still well worth watching for a look at the world today.

This movie became more interesting as I continued to watch it. Samuel Jackson played an excellent part as the antagonistic evil Able Turner. This movie teaches me to never move next door to a cop no matter how friendly they appear to be. But Lakeview Terrace is a bit extreme with the cop next door type of deal. Not only that the Mattsons had to deal with a cop living next door but he's a racist. Able abused his power as a police office by spying on the Mattsons and acting upon it. I know somehow that's illegal to snoop into people's privacy. This is one of the best parts Samuel Jackson played in a movie next to Pulp Fiction and Shaft 2000. Kerry Washington was excellent as the Ms. Lisa Matton,Kerry is versatile. Overall Lakeview Terrace is a interesting movie that build ups to a powerful climaxing ending. Recommend anyone to watch it with a family or friend.

A young successful interracial couple move into a new home in an exclusive California neighborhood. Chris Mattson (Patrick Wilson) and Lisa Mattson (Kerry Washington) are greeted with hostility by their new neighbor, LAPD Sergeant Abel Turner (Samuel L. Jackson), a widower and single father with a son and daughter. Chris and Lisa attempt to be cordial with Abel, inviting him and his family to their home and attending a barbecue Abel throws for some of his fellow officers. Despite this, Abel keeps becoming more disruptive and aggressive to Chris and Lisa. This eventually leads to retaliation on Chris' part and a confrontation with tragic consequences. This movie despite its racial overtones doesn't break any new ground as a thriller. Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington are a yuppie couple pushed too far and Sam Jackson as Abel is their disturbed neighbor/antagonist who wishes them harm. Definitely nothing new. The acting and script are okay with Sam Jackson's performance easily being the best. The ending is something that can be seen coming a mile away. This film is something you would watch on a slow day if it came on cable.

I'm sure Neil LaBute is a talented director- I've enjoyed both Your Friends and Neighbors and the criminally underrated Nurse Betty (not seen In the Company of Men or Shape of Things, but heard great things about both, not so much the Wicker Man redux)- and Lakeview Terrace occasionally flashes some moments that reveal his understanding of the subject matter at hand. Other times, he just lets the screenwriters do it for him, and it turns out far less fascinating or really disturbing as it could have been. Early on the story speaks its promise: a conservative LA cop- yes, conservative first and foremost as one notes the character's disdain for democrats or just liberalism in general- played by Sam Jackson sees a white guy (Patrick Wilson) and black woman (Kerry Washington) move in. From the get-go there's hostility, if at first more subtle and just annoying. And there's some possible questions that could be raised in the course of the running time of the picture, if just as possibilities. But the problem, very soon to see, is that everything that motivates Jackson's character to act the way he does becomes twisted around a plot contrivance. I won't spoil it (not to really shield you from it, just because it's not worth it if you intend on seeing it), but something from Abel's history that shouldn't be so blatant and be more ambiguous or allow Jackson as an actor some room for subtlety or room for interpretation is shoved down our collective gullets. One might wish that there would be more room for three-dimensionality in general, but at best we get just 2D and at worst it's basically one continuous drumming beat until we almost kind of dread Jackson's character coming in on Wilson and Washingtons' scenes, not so much because he's supposed to be menacing but because it throws off the flow of the story. It's not even that Jackson is bad in the performance, on the contrary he does the best he can and sometimes does bring that flash or just flinch of the face that reminds us how good an actor he can be. LaBute can't figure out entirely how to proceed with a highly charged drama, however, without a heavy-handed metaphorical device. It is a fact that the Southern California has been a hot-bed of wildfires spreading all about, destroying lots of pricey property and leveling to waste millions (maybe billions) of dollars of revenue. The tactic here in Lakeview Terrace is to take that symbol of fire burning down a city and transplant it into the burning down of racial bonding and peace and yada yada, and it's not really a metaphor/symbol/whatever that hits right away - but when it does, yikes is it an over-bearing claptrap made especially for the climax (I was almost pining for that also hackneyed Haggis formula of crashes in Crash). And, again, motivation and really well-defined characters end up sinking this after the promising first act; as soon as Abel's agitation turns to practically psychotic behavior, it's hard to actually connect with this past something out of a horror movie. And I don't mean that as something for a cathartic reaction or other. Wilson and Washingtons' characters don't help much either as we're privy to a contrived sub-plot involving an "unintentional" pregnancy (not to mention Jackson's own semi-interesting sub-plot with him screwing up on the force). By the end it turns to being laughable as a quasi-revenge quasi-what-the-hell treatise on uneasy racial relations where just some more hints of unintentional racism, as opposed to just the sinister presence of big-bad-black-*cop*, might be an advantage. 5.5/10

Neil LaBute has built his portfolio breathing life into movies and stage plays about dysfunctional individuals (usually men) who have difficulty fitting into relationships and societal norms. His first offering, 1997's In the Company of Men, earned him praise for his stark tale of two misogynist businessmen who conspire to romantically destroy a deaf woman, and is play "Bash: Latter Day Plays" earned him excommunication from the Church of Latter Day Saints for its unflattering portrayal of Mormons. With Lakeview Terrace, LaBute opts for the unconventional exploration of black-on-white and black-on-black prejudice with uneven results. Samuel L. Jackson plays Abel Turner, a veteran Los Angeles cop and single parent struggling to raise his two young kids. Turner's life has been scarred and ruptured by the death of his wife, who was killed in a car accident with her white lover while engaging in an affair – something that understandably has been festering in Turner's craw for some time. When the purchasers of the house next door turn out to be a racially mixed couple, Turner begins transposing his hatred on them as proxies for his wife's transgressions. Initially Turner's intimidating ways seem focused on bullying his new "liberal" neighbors into maintaining decorum and giving his kids a wide berth, but things soon progress into unstable territory as his years of being an alpha male with a gun and a badge begin to get the better of him. With each successful intimidation, Turner becomes emboldened to become a law unto himself. LaBute frames Turner's exploits against the backdrop of an escalating brushfire in the neighboring hills, which serves as metaphor for Turner's growing inner rage that threatens to consume the property and lives of everyone involved. LaBute's execution has all the subtlety of a gun butt to the head, which may actually have been his intention, given how he likely figured the audience would be comprised of escapist, action-seeking types not generally known for reflecting upon humanity's shortcomings. Jackson does everything asked of him as he shows the progression of what at first seems to be a well-intentioned and loving parent, into an unbridled bully. The problem comes in the film's final act as the story culminates in forced cacophony that pushes the boundary of believability over the edge. A small dose of well timed restraint would have transformed this movie from a semi-decent popcorn muncher into a more serious vehicle for reflection on human values and prejudices.

Honestly, I never watch movies about racism other than those I was forced to watch (even read about) in high school. Fortunately, college doesn't focus on this. I've seen quite a few of the more conventional "whites are racist" versions and they are all better than this. I had no idea what the movie was about. I thought it was a thriller with a misjudged cop living next door. Wrong! The entire first half is slow...very slow. They slowly show you the personalities of everyone and then the movie starts. By the end of the movie, I was very mad. I knew the cop was racist but I didn't realize the whole dang movie was about this. I thought there would be a better motive than the one that was given. They try to explain how he became like this and it still wasn't enough. I should have read the synopsis first...and I would have passed on this movie. Unfortunately I didn't and this movie gets anther negative review.