‘Lakeview Terrace’ | 3 stars
By ROBERT W. BUTLER
The Kansas City Star
Lakeview Terrace” may smack of cheap exploitation, but it’s pretty great exploitation.
Writer/director Neil LaBute (“In the Company of Men”), who has made a career of poking around the dark side of the human psyche, delivers a thriller that also scores points about how race remains the bogeyman of American life.
Abel Turner (Samuel L. Jackson) seems like a solid citizen. The widowed father of two, he says his prayers every morning, corrects his kids’ English and bans the wearing of jerseys that celebrate athletes whose lifestyles he doesn’t approve of.
Oh, yeah … he’s also an LAPD officer.
Abel is mildly curious when Lisa (Kerry Washington), an attractive young African-American woman, moves into the vacant house next door. But something clicks when Abel realizes that the white guy unloading the moving van isn’t hired help. No, it’s Chris (Patrick Wilson), Lisa’s husband.
And deep inside Abel, a nasty little gear starts turning.
LaBute’s screenplay gives Jackson, one of our most underrated actors, an opportunity to go deep. It’s a performance that works on a couple of levels. Outwardly Abel is the decent guy who once out of uniform still patrols the neighborhood every night, is always ready to lend a hand and is the life of the barbecue.
But beneath that, Jackson finds a sociopath just waiting to explode. And the couple next door lights the fuse.
It’s not just the interracial thing, though that’s bad enough in Abel’s book. It’s political (Chris and Lisa are liberals; Abel is fine with George W.) and sexual (Abel’s kids spy on the new neighbors getting it on in their pool) and parental (Abel’s teenage daughter begins to see Lisa as a surrogate mother).
“Lakeside Terrace” is at its best when Abel uses his authority as a cop to intimidate and terrify, all the while looking like the good public servant.
We get a taste early on of Abel’s methodology when he finds Chris — a supermarket exec — listening to rap on a car stereo and tells him, “You can listen to that noise all night long … when you wake in the morning you’ll still be white.”
Abel is a master of passive aggressiveness. His backyard floodlights — he says he’s concerned about miscreants lurking in the ravine behind their houses — light up Chris and Lisa’s bedroom. Abel throws a late party for his cop pals; when Chris storms over to ask that the volume be turned down, he finds himself getting an unwanted lap dance from a stripper.
When Chris plants a hedge of trees to block the view of Abel’s yard, Abel begins whaling away on them with a chain saw. And one day Chris finds all four tires on his hybrid car slashed.
But Chris is impotent to do anything. As Abel gloats: “You want to call the cops? I’ll tell you who’s on duty.”
The siege mentality that sets in takes a toll on the couple’s relationship. Abel’s provocations fuel Chris’ long-suppressed machismo. A big blowout creeps ever nearer, like the brushfire that has been burning in the surrounding hills for days.
In the last reel “Lakeview Terrace” takes several melodramatic turns from which it never quite recovers. Still, the blend of suspense and dark humor that dominates the movie is perversely entertaining.
And if the reasons for Abel’s malevolence seem just a little too pat (they involve his late wife), Jackson finds a way to sell his character’s obsession.
It may be a guilty pleasure, but “Lakeview Terrace” is a pleasure nonetheless.
‘LAKEVIEW TERRACE’ ★★★
Director: Neil LaBute
Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, Kerry Washington, Patrick Wilson
Rated: PG-13 for violence, sexuality, language, some drug references
Running time: 1:50
To reach Robert W. Butler, call 816-234-4760 or send e-mail to bbutler@kcstar.com.
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