Jon Peters Reviews: “Lakeview Terrace”

After seeing the trailer for ‘Lakeview Terrace’, I really had no intentions on seeing it. To me, it looked tacky, Sam Jackson chewing scenery, and had the ‘bad cop’ angle going for it; it all seemed too ‘been there, don’t that’ for me. Alas, I saw ‘Lakeview Terrace’ and while it still felt like I’ve seen it all before there was something interesting aspects going on which will make some discuss it and others irritated.

If you remembered the trailer, it shows an interracial couple moving into their first home only to be harassed by Sam Jackson, a police officer. Abel Turner (Jackson) has a problem with them and he isn’t afraid to say it. I don’t really want to give much credit to the screenwriters, David Loughery and Howard Korder; because I think most of what they were doing became quite ham-fisted. Neil LaBute and the actors, mainly Jackson and Patrick Wilson help the material and raised it to much more interesting levels than it should’ve been.

The film amps up racial tensions so much so I’m sure most college kids who are in screenwriting course would laugh at this. Every character talks about race. I understand it’s the core problem but there are little things like when the couple invites some neighbors over for a house warming party Abel comes over and hands the wife (Kerry Washington) a book on black history. It’s a subtle jam towards her white husband (who naturally listens to rap music) but it adds to talk about her father not liking him because he’s white, Abel’s daughter wants to like a white boy in school, and one of friend’s to the family saying he wishes he could nail a black chick. This is very heavy handed stuff and gets a little grating. But for every one of those scenes there are some nice subtle scenes like in the very beginning when Abel is talking to his Asian neighbor. He asks Abel if he’s talked to the new neighbors. Abel says ‘I’ll wait for the movers to go’. He sees the father hugging the daughter, thinking she’s married to an older gentleman. Her husband is actually in a white tee shirt moving boxes in. It’s a fun play on stereotypes.

While the race relations are an interesting angle in this upper class neighbor, it’s the film’s question of masculinity that works better. It’s subtle unlike the race card. Chris is supposed to handle the neighbor issues because he is the man in the family. He must stand up for his family and barks at her when she threatens to handle the issues. This subtext is important in the climax. We slowly learn why Abel is the way he is and Chris uses that against him in the end. I really like how this was handled and portrayed by the actors. Sam Jackson is, well, Sam Jackson. Nobody outside of maybe Daniel Day Lewis can chew scenery like Jackson, but he digs for something deeper with Abel. He makes his character, which is the antagonist, really respectable and likable. He’s a single dad, who has morals and rules. You can’t argue against that. Patrick Wilson is pretty likable too. His character is a Midwestern, a key distinction between Abel’s more confrontational West Coast mentalities. He’s smart and liberal and in another fun little subtext is the nature of being liberal versus conservative or as Abel says, ‘Watch out guys, he’s a Democrat’. Washington is pretty bland here. I haven’t found her too appealing as an actress yet although she has done some fine work in ‘Last King of Scotland’.

Watching ‘Lakeview Terrace’ in all of its over-the-top themes, I began thinking this as a modern version of something like ‘Bone’, the Larry Cohen film from the mid-70s or something like a Sam Fuller film. That director’s tackled racism a lot in their features and someone like Cohen in ‘Bone’ gave it to us very heavy handed. For some, this will irk them. I dug it and with a pretty compelling issue between Abel and Chris, I can’t believe I dug it, but I did. There is one time where Chris tells his wife ‘I don’t even know you anymore’ which I had to roll my eyes for its use of a cliché but Sam Jackson is the welding that held it all together for me.