It's impossible to watch The Lookout without thinking of Memento. Both films center on heroes suffering from partial memory loss after a traumatic event, and scribbling down notes in order to remember things. Both relay critical information in reverse chronological order. In fact, there's nothing terribly original about The Lookout at all, especially once it breaks down into a rote but efficient heist picture with gears that click a little too smoothly into place. Yet writer-director Scott Frank—who scripted Malice, Out Of Sight, and Minority Report, among other solidly crafted Hollywood thrillers—has cleverly cross-pollinated the genre with a rich character study, raising the stakes considerably. Anchored by yet another exceptional performance from Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who adds this effort to recent standout work in Mysterious Skin and Brick, the film plumbs deep inside the mind of a young man whose deficiencies make him ripe for exploitation.
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