On the Lookout for Gordon-Levitt's Rising Indie Star Power

Anyone who watches American Idol knows that the key to success is picking the right song. The basic principle applies to actors, too-half the battle is picking the right project. No one does this better than Joseph Gordon-Levitt, whose career has been on a steady ascent since 1994's Angels in the Outfield.

Most recently, the actor and Columbia dropout graced the screen in two indie hits, Gregg Araki's Mysterious Skin, as a gay hustler, and Rian Johnson's Brick, as a teenage detective. Both films featured young casts, gritty story lines, and a generally hip sensibility.

The Lookout, Gordon-Levitt's latest outing, feels a bit reined in on all those fronts. Written and directed by Scott Frank, the screenwriter for Stephen Soderbergh's 1998 flick Out of Sight, the film is less interested in innovation and more in old-fashioned story-telling. That is why it is another perfect step for the young actor-The Lookout proves he's not all over-the-top teen angst. He can be both edgy and restrained.

Gordon-Levitt plays Chris Pratt, the proverbial high school jock-legend who suffers a traumatic brain injury after crashing his convertible, which kills two friends and amputates his girlfriend's leg. In fact, his performance is an exercise in restraint-Chris's brain injury has muted his former vivacity. Gordon-Levitt makes hours spent in rehab, where he must relearn how to put events into sequence, in a bar drinking non-alcoholic beer, and in a bank where he is a night janitor, pop off the screen.

Nearly 10 years after writing Out of Sight, Frank's script feels like a muted version of his earlier work. The pace is slower, the characters are older, the action is more internal. Though perhaps less immediately satisfying than his previous films, The Lookout rewrites the heist genre for a thinking audience. Even as violence erupts in the denouement, where one would expect action-packed chase scenes, et al., Frank's direction feels evenly paced and slowly methodical. The largo tempo of the violence is, at times, more excruciating than in a quicker movie like The Departed, and it subtly underscores the claustrophobically deliberate pace Chris must take after his injury.

The film also skirts around deeper issues. Though never directly invoked, the Iraq war looms large over the tenor of this film. Chris's brain injury is eerily similar to the soldiers' injuries we read about in Time or witness on television news programs. Chris Pratt, with his all-American boy name, is an easy proxy for injured American soldiers. In the movie, his altered state is the result of his own personal hubris. In real life, the damage could more easily be traced to an American cultural hubris.

The other characters in the film all seem hung up on the idea of Chris Pratt-whether it be the boy before his accident or the one who survives. As his blind caretaker-a very literal interpretation of the blind leading the blind-Jeff Daniels (The Squid and the Whale) gives a moving and convincing performance. Though his character seems to be the most pat, serving several plot points very conveniently, he also adds warmth to the mostly chilly film.

No one is chillier than the usually dapper Matthew Goode (Match Point) as the organizer of the heist. It is around his character that certain plot points seem to fall away. For example, it is unclear why he seems to have a vendetta against poor little Chris Pratt, other than the fact that he used to be pretty popular and his family has a lot of money. But money in this movie is, as the tagline will tell you, power-more so than is intelligence or physical ability.

In Hollywood, however, power lies in the ability to pick good projects. For Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Scott Frank's prescient, careful, and caustic piece was a pretty perfect choice.