Instant Analysis: Lakeview Terrace

Feature: Lakeview Terrace
Director: Neil LaBute
Notable Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, Patrick Wilson, Kerry Washington
Original Release: 2008
Language: English
Running Time: 110 Minutes

Occasionally, I am just drawn to a bad film for the pure novelty of watching it. I’m not talking about your everyday boring and baseless bad film. I’m talking about ridiculous things are happening and they are highly entertaining kind of bad films. Lakeview Terrace certainly isn’t boring, but it didn’t quite reach that upper-echelon of cheap entertainment. The film tries it’s hardest to explore the tough dynamic of interracial relationships and the age old problem of clashing machismo, but unfortunately it comes up short of its intended goal and ends up falling back on Samuel L. Jackson to carry the movie with his neighborhood terrorist antics. Let’s just say that falling back on Samuel L. Jackson’s antics to carry a movie when you are trying to make a serious point is not the best way to go. Don’t get me wrong, Jackson is fantastic given the right circumstances (see Pulp Fiction) but this just wasn’t it. He plays the role of the veteran cop/neighborhood protector/overbearing moral enforcer, Abel Turner, pretty damn well, but the support from the writers and cast are non-existent. The plot was transparent, the metaphor thin, and the action predictable. However there is one thing that saved this movie from 2-stardom and bumped it up a half star to a 2.5. At one point in the film, Turner’s neighbor plants trees across his fence to prevent him from seeing into his yard. The only rational thing to do (in Turner’s mind anyway) is to start a chainsaw assault on the trees which turns into a chainsaw assault on his neighbor who is coincidentally both defending himself and attacking Jackson’s character with a rake.

Even though it wasn’t the intended climax, that was it for me, which was not a good sign. The film wraps up predictably and I began to lose interest as the inevitable came. I love Sam Jackson, but as I said before, this one only pans out as a 2.5 out of 5.