SXSW - opening night

Chris Tilly attends the world premiere of new Joseph Gordon-Levitt thriller 'The Lookout'

Mar 12 2007

Following a hellish flight to Texas, a day of jet lag, spare ribs and disc golf (wikipedia it and wonder why it hasn't caught on in the UK), Time Out finally made it to the opening night of Austin's South by South West (SXSW) festival, attending a screening of deeply underwhelming new thriller 'The Lookout'.

Written and directed by Scott Frank, the film revolves around the unfortunate Chris Pratt (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a successful teen sports star whose life is thrown into chaos following a serious car accident. Psychologically impaired, Pratt's life is a permanent struggle to make sense of the world, until he meets charming bad boy Gary (Matthew Goode) and his beautiful friend Luvlee (Isla Fisher). Their respective friendship and love comes at a price however, as the dastardly duo have designs on the bank where Pratt works the night shift.

What follows is a painfully predictable story of cross and double cross, enlivened by a delightfully deadpan turn from Jeff Daniels as Pratt's blind flatmate, but ultimately flawed thanks to a script that fails to ever truly engage. A poor man's 'Memento', it's a disappointing directorial debut from a writer whose previous work ('Get Shorty', 'Out of Sight', 'Minority Report') promised much.

After that, the audience decamped to a car park up the road for the opening night party, where I was accosted by two rather too enthusiastic men offering to rent me movies on my USB flash drive, and a group of filmmakers buying me beer in an effort to get me to watch their film about recovering alcoholics. The irony of my attending a screening 'Lost in Woonsocket' with a hangover was lost on neither party, but thanks to their generosity, I'll doubtless be checking it out in the morning.

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