Lakeview Terrace mixes absurdity with substance

By Faheem Ahmed     9/25/08 7:00pm

"I'm the police; you have to do what I say!" Folks, let's take a moment to reflect on this very profound statement. Your next-door neighbor, screaming this at you, might leave you slightly befuddled. But imagine your neighbor as Samuel L. Jackson (Snakes on a Plane). Doing so instantly injects this somewhat innocuous threat with pure badass. Seriously, I would do anything to have Jackson's iconic voice as my voicemail recording, telling the mothafuckin' caller to leave a GODDAMN message.The line above is featured in the trailer for this weekend's box office headliner Lakeview Terrace, starring Patrick Wilson (The Phantom of the Opera), Kerry Washington (The Last King of Scotland) and Jackson as the antagonist. Wilson and Washington are newlyweds, moving into their California dream house. Jackson, a strict widowed father of two, does not approve of their interracial marriage.

With his night patrols and keen eyes, Jackson provides comfort to some as the neighborhood watchdog and police officer. It is obvious, however, that he does not love his new neighbors, and he begins to harass them to the point of no return. Some of his pranks, including flashing huge lights into the couple's bedroom, have a very sinister undertone. Deciding they have had enough, Washington and Wilson fight back. Unfortunately, viewers who have watched the trailer already know this. What happened to previews that don't reveal the entire plot and ending?

While the conflict escalation that ensues in this film is a bit absurd, the story touches on the important issues of racism and intolerance. Jackson views the couple's liberal marriage as an affront to his own conservative views and values. The treatment of this conflict made the movie strong in the first half, but afterwards the increasingly ludicrous plot bogged it down.

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The script by David Loughrey (Tom and Huck) and Howard Korder (The Passion of Ayn Rand) relies far too much on coincidental circumstances rather than on logical experience. The stream of disastrous events that follows the frequent clashes between Jackson and Wilson becomes overkill. Furthermore, the last ten minutes of the film are horrendous. The ending is very out of place and does no justice to Jackson's charismatic performance.

With that said, I will still recommend this movie for being entertaining and touching briefly on some philosophical points. It provides an overly exaggerated but important examination of class, race and gender relations in our society. I tip my hat to director Neil Labute (responsible for the hilariously bad The Wicker Man) for not dishing up another hackneyed Hollywood thriller with no substance. And fans of Jackson will definitely enjoy this film.

Faheem Ahmed is a senior at Baker College.

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