Lakeview Terrace

SONY
Street: Jan. 27
Prebook: now
> Engaging thriller takes an easy way out in its last third.

Interracial newlyweds (Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington) move into a suburban Los Angeles neighborhood and quickly earn the displeasure of their autocratic neighbor (Samuel L. Jackson), a tough cop who wages a campaign of intimidation against them. What starts out as a garden-variety feud rapidly escalates into a deadly confrontation in this initially intriguing potboiler. However, the movie turns wildly melodramatic and suffers from a jury-rigged climax that finds Jackson’s character behaving in a manner at odds with the one he affected in the early reels. Jackson makes his character believable, though, and Washington adds depth to an underwritten role, while Wilson does particularly well as the self-satisfied “progressive” whose inner racist threatens to burst free when the cop’s relentless bullying finally gets under his skin. Director Neil LaBute constructs a competent movie, but Lakeview Terrace lacks the personal stamp that can be found on his earlier films In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors.

Shelf Talk: As a tension-in-suburbia thriller, Lakeview Terrace will find a ready audience among seekers of the genre. Jackson’s showy star also turn should draw viewers, and we’d play up the increasingly popular Washington. The film’s theatrical trailer, one of the year’s most effective, could convince those on the fence.