FILM REVIEW OF "UNBREAKABLE" (2000)

Writer & director M. Night Shyamalan's fourth film "Unbreakable" refers to its protagonist, football stadium security guard David Dunn (Bruce Willis) who has been born with an almost perfect body because his bones cannot be broken. Far less introspective and surprising than the enigmatic "Sixth Sense," this atmospheric melodrama depicts the friendship between Dunn and an African-American, Elijah Price, nicknamed Mr. Glass (Samuel L. Jackson), who suffers from an unusual bone disease designated 'Osteogenesis Imperfecta.' Basically, 'Osteogenesis Imperfecta' is a genetic disorder where bones break easily. In other words, Glass' surname reflects the extremely fragile nature of his body. The first scene in "Unbreakable" details the birth of Mr. Glass in a department store apparel fitting room.  One of the men who takes charge of the infant discovers to his horror that the little boy's arms and legs are misshapen from where he fought to get out of his mother's womb. Later, we learn that Mr. Glass has become obsessed with comic book superheroes.  Shrewdly, his mother (Charlayne Woodard of “The Crucible”) used comics to coax her son out of the seclusion of their apartment. Glass becomes a leading authority on comic books as well as the characteristics of super heroes and super villains. He represents a strong villain because he reckons if he occupies one end of the spectrum then an 'unbreakable' hero occupies the other end. In his fiendish efforts to find the other end of the spectrum, Mr. Glass commits incorrigible crimes which eventually land him in a mental asylum. For example, he engineers a train wreck where everybody on board dies, except for our protagonist David Dunn. 

Eventually, Mr. Glass catches up with David after his miraculous survival without a broken bone makes news’ headlines as the sole survivor of the deadly train wreck.  Moreover, he takes a bizarre interest in him that Dunn doesn't reciprocate.  Nevertheless, David’s curiosity prompts him to search for information about his health that he has taken for granted.  For example, he has never missed a day at work owing to illness.  Later, he realizes that he was never injured in an accident that broke his future wife’s leg.  After the wreck, David cites an injury that convinced him from pursuing a promising career in college football.  His wife, Audrey Dunn (Robin Wright of "Forrest Gump"), is relieved to learn David has decided to hang up his cleats.  Glass' inquiries arouses the curiosity of David's son Joseph (Spencer Treat Clark of "Gladiator") who loads up more free weights than David thinks possible to press and winds up impressing both of them.  David pushes 350 pounds!  Later, when Joseph is convinced that his father cannot be hurt by flying lead, a standoff occurs in the kitchen with Joseph threatening his dad with a revolver at point blank range. Of course, neither David nor his terrified wife Audrey believe that he is invincible where bullets are concerned, and they manage to persuade Joseph to put the pistol down.  Reportedly, when George Reeves portrayed the Man of Steel on the television program “Superman,” a child approached him with a gun during a public appearance and tried to shoot him, but Reeves talked him out of it.  He warned him that the bullet might ricochet off him and wound somebody else.

The $75-million "Unbreakable" boils down to your basic clash of the titans. Mr. Glass has spent his entire life searching for David. Initially, David refuses to believe anything about him made him special.  After the tragic train accident, David has second thoughts.  One scene demonstrates both of David's two usual capabilities. A maniac forces his way into a residential home, kills the husband, ties up the two children, assaults the wife, and leaves her tied up with bleeding wrists. Meantime, David has the power of insight that enables him to tell who constitutes a threat to the public. Glass is on hand at the football stadium when David displays this power.  Scrutinizing the spectators filing into the stadium, David points out a suspicious character wearing a cameo shirt.  Our protagonist suspects this fellow may be packing a pistol out-of-sight under his shirt. At the last minute, the suspicious fellow steps out of line.  Desperately Mr. Glass pursues him and falls down a stairway in his efforts to learn if he was toting a firearm which matched David's description. Indeed, this suspicious guy was carrying a concealed weapon!  Later, David spots a maintenance man.  They brush past each other, and David follows him to the house where the husband lies dead and the children are tied up.  David attacks the maintenance man and gets his arms around his neck.  The maniac slams David repeatedly against walls, smashing up those walls, but he cannot dislodge David who keeps him in a choke hold until the brute loses consciousness.  At first, David and his family didn’t trust Elijah, and they classified him as a nuisance. Their attitude changes, and the two become friends, until the final quarter of the action, when Elijah reveals his true colors, and David realizes that Elijah poses a threat.  He orchestrated three terrorist attacks in an effort to find the man at the other in of the spectrum.  Once, David recognizes Glass as a threat, he alerts the authorities. 

Clocking in at 106 minutes, “Unbreakable” seems to take forever to unfold.  The ending is a let-down because Glass and David never tangle, but the character-driven action is momentarily engrossing until it concludes with an anti-climactic situation. Bruce Willis delivers a beautifully restrained performance, and he behaves just as we suspect a normal person would.  The scene on the train before the accident is liable to draw the wrath of married women.  David removes his wedding ring and makes a play for a female passenger who sits beside him.  Samuel L. Jackson is just as good as Elijah but never really seems menacing enough.  Despite the strong character study of two rivals, “Unbreakable” is by its dreary pace and its anti-climactic ending.  

FILM REVIEW OF "THE HATEFUL EIGHT" (2015)

The world emerges as a hostile, inhospitable setting in writer & director Quentin Tarantino’s second western “The Hateful Eight” (**** OUT OF ****), and everybody but the innocent bystanders winds up getting what they deserve.  Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Walton Goggins, and Channing Tatum seem never at a loss for words in this consistently entertaining but abrasively self-indulgent horse opera.  Like a typical Tarantino tale, “The Hateful Eight” wallows in blood-splattered carnage, punctuated by gunfire, and intensified by politically incorrect subject matter laden with scatological, R-rated profanity.  Set in a sprawling mosaic of snow-swept Wyoming mountains, this suspenseful bounty hunters versus outlaws western  methodically unfolds like a claustrophobic but chatty Agatha Christie drawing-room murder-mystery.  Predictably, Tarantino shoots the works with both surprises and shocks that keep this static outing interesting as well as melodramatic.  A suspicious bounty hunter escorts a homicidal dame with a $10-thousand dollar reward on her head for a date with the gallows.  During his journey, the bounty hunter encounters various gunmen and takes refuge with them in a remote stagecoach relay station during a freezing blizzard.  The predominantly all-male cast is nothing short of exceptional, but this doesn’t eclipse Jennifer Jason Leigh’s performance as a slimy villain.  Now, if you’re not an ardent connoisseur of all things Tarantino, you may find yourself exiting the premises before the film reaches its midpoint. 

Scruffy, loud-mouthed, bounty hunter John Ruth (Kurt Russell of “Tombstone”) has chartered a private stagecoach to transport his prisoner, Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh of “Backdraft”), to the town of Red Rock.  He is taking Daisy in alive to watch her hang for her crimes.  Unlike most bounty hunters, Ruth prefers to show up with his prisoners alive rather than dead.  Along the trail, Ruth runs into another bounty hunter, Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson of “Pulp Fiction”), who is smoking his pipe perched atop a stack of three frozen corpses.  Major Warren gunned down these three guys for the collective $8-thousand dollar bounty on their heads.  Unlike Ruth, Warren takes no chances and shows up with his desperadoes dead rather than alive.  Major Warren explains that his horse fell dead during the trip across the mountains, and he inquires if Ruth will give him a lift.  Reluctantly, Ruth allows Warren to climb aboard.  Before Warren can enter the stagecoach, Ruth orders him to surrender his two six-shooters to the coachman, O.B Jackson (James Parks of “Machete”), for safekeeping.  Later, another man stranded on foot, Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins of “Cowboys & Aliens”), who claims to be the sheriff of Red Rock flags them down.  When Ruth demands to see his badge, Mannix explains that he was riding to Red Rock when his horse stepped into a gopher hole and he had to shoot it.  Initially, Ruth refuses to believe Mannix. Mannix explains that Red Rock recently lost their sheriff and that he is replacing him.  Since he hasn’t gotten to Red Rock yet, he doesn’t have a badge.  Furthermore, Mannix argues that Warren and the coach driver will serve as witnesses to testify against Ruth if Mannix is found frozen dead in the snow because Ruth wouldn’t oblige him. Glumly, Ruth lets Mannix join them.  Before he lets Mannix aboard, Ruth strikes up an uneasy alliance with Warren.  Ruth lets Warren reclaim his revolvers and promises to protect him if Warren will watch over him, too.  An infamous Confederate marauder, Mannix is wary of Major Warren who is an ex-Union cavalryman with his own notorious reputation.  According to Mannix, Warren burned down a Confederate prison camp to escape from it.  During the conflagration, more than forty young Confederate recruits died.  CSA President Jefferson Davis put a bounty on Warren’s head and Federal authorities drummed him out of the cavalry. 

Basically, the three men aboard the stagecoach remain deeply suspicious about each other despite any deals they may have forged.  Eventually, the stagecoach arrives at a lonely relay station called Minnie Haberdashery where six horse stagecoach teams are changed while the passengers rest and refresh themselves.  Warren is surprised to learn that Minnie and her family not only have left the relay station in the hands of a Mexican, Bob (Demián Bichir of “Savages”), but also have gone to visit friends.  Meantime, Ruth ushers Daisy inside at gunpoint and interrogates the three guests about their identities and destinations.  He learns that an Englishman, Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth of “Reservoir Dogs”), is a hangman in route to Red Rock.  The other man, a drover back from a cattle drive, Joe Gage (Michael Madsen of “Die Another Day”), is heading to see his mother on the far side of Red Rock.  Ruth disarms both men, dismantles their revolvers, and sends O.B. into the freezing storm to dump their firearms in the nearby outhouse.  The other guest, elderly Confederate General Sandy Smithers (Bruce Dern of “The Cowboys”), doesn’t own a gun.  Nevertheless, Ruth doesn’t trust any of them, and he keeps Daisy attached to a chain around his wrist.  Meantime, Warren doesn’t believe Mexican Bob’s story about Minnie, but he doesn’t have enough evidence to call him a liar.  Unquestionably, the scenes in the stagecoach station constitute the best part of this western.

 

Kurt Russell blusters through his role as John Ruth, giving a variation on the John Wayne performance that he gave for John Carpenter in “Big Trouble in Little China.”  He plays a character who is far friendlier than the Stuntman Mike villain he played in Tarantino’s “Death Proof” (1986). Samuel L. Jackson is at the top of his game as the controversial Major Warren.  He dresses like the Lee Van Cleef character Colonel Douglas Mortimer did in Sergio Leone’s second Clint Eastwood movie “For a Few Dollars More.”  Channing Tatum appears near the end as a French pistolero who keeps the bullet loops on his holstered pair of revolvers stuffed with lead.  The character that Jennifer Jason Leigh plays hasn’t a shred of decency, and John Ruth doesn’t treat her with diplomacy.  At one point, he smashes out her front teeth after she gets him riled. “The Hateful Eight” clocks in at 168 minutes.  Essentially, Tarantino takes his own sweet time setting up the situation and developing the characters.  He gives each of the eight a chance to showcase themselves once the blizzard confines everybody to the stagecoach station with nowhere else to go.  During the second half, we learn a lot about these characters.  Whether they are wounded or killed, you probably won’t shed a tear for any of them.  If you’re looking for role models, you won’t find them.  These guys and especially the girl are all dastards. Nevertheless, die-hard Tarantino fans will find it in their hearts to forgive him for the elongated running time, applaud his spontaneous, slam-bang violence, and chuckle at his ghoulish gallery of gruesome characters.  Indeed, Tarantino’s eighth feature film lives up to its title, and some parts of it are more hateful than other parts.  Compared with Tarantino’s previous seven epics, this gritty, gimlet-eyed western resembles “Reservoir Dogs” with its Spartan number of settings.  Major Warren’s story about General Smithers’ son sounds like a reversal of what happened to Marsellus Wallace in “Pulp Fiction.” This scene is probably going to make some southern males cringe for its “Deliverance” subject matter. In fact, the director has said that not only he was influenced by Sergio Corbucci’s Spaghetti westerns, but also the cult science fiction horror movie “The Thing” that starred Kurt Russell.  Altogether “The Hateful Eight” qualifies as Tarantino’s best since “Jackie Brown.”

FILM REVIEW OF ''KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE" (2015)

Imagine putting the James Bond movies into a cinematic blender with the Austin Powers comedies, and you’ll see what British director Matthew Vaughn does with his outlandish movie “Kingsman: The Secret Service.”  For the record, Vaughn made his first film as a director in 2004 with the murderous mobster melodrama “Layer Cake” (2004) starring Daniel Craig.  Three years later he followed up “Layer Cake” with “Stardust.”  This imaginative Neil Gaiman fantasy romance bore little resemblance to the gritty “Layer Cake.”  Vaughn didn’t come into his own until he adapted Mark Millar’s subversive graphic novel “Hit Girl” as the Nicolas Cage actioneer “Kick Ass.”  This controversial revenge thriller about a dad and daughter who dressed like comic book super-heroes to destroy a dastardly gangster spawned a sequel.  Vaughn’s biggest success came with the incomparable Marvel Comics “X-Men” prequel “X-Men: First Class” about the costume-clad mutants in their youth during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.  Vaughn has recycled many of the themes and characters from those movies for his adaptation of Mark Millar’s graphic novel “Kingsman: The Secret Service”(***1/2 OUT OF ****) that features Colin Firth, Michael Caine, and Mark Strong.  This uneven but entertaining homage to the James Bond movies provides an overdue departure from the usual formulaic, testosterone laden fare that sacrifices wit and style for realism and gore.  Mind you, Vaughn grinds his action gears during the early scenes as he sets up his improbable plot.  Happily, he has everything running smoothly for an explosive finale.  The big problem that Vaughn had to contend with in launching a new franchise was pairing relatively unknown actor Taron Egerton with veteran actor Colin Firth who rarely plays armed and deadly heroes.  Meanwhile, sympathetic heroes and treacherous villains tangle mercilessly in this larger-than-life, hyperbolic espionage escapade that could easily qualify as “50 Shades of Blood” for its sensational number of mind-blowing action scenes.  Hundreds of thousands of people perish when an evil megalomaniac plans to solve overpopulation by implanting SIM cards into their heads, controlling their thoughts, and converting their cell phones into improvised explosive devices.  “Kingsman: The Secret Service” qualifies as the kind of silly but stout, R-rated saga that might repel squeamish moviegoers. 

Matthew Vaughn and his wife Jane Golden, who has collaborated on every film her husband has helmed except “Layer Cake,” have adapted Mark Millar’s graphic novel with the same audacious abandon that they infused in “Kick Ass.”  Indeed, they have made some extreme but inspired changes to Millar’s narrative.   For example, without giving anything away, the villain in the graphic novel was Caucasian; the villain’s second-in-command was male, and Mark Hamill played himself rather than a scientist. “Kingsman” concerns an independent, international espionage agency hidden behind the façade of an elite tailor's shop on London's Savile Row that operates at the highest level of discretion like “The Man from U.N.C.L.E” television series.  This private outfit makes Navy SEALs look like second-rate shrimp.  Indeed, if such an ultra-secret organization existed, world peace would be guaranteed.  Latter day British knights of the realm with appropriate code-names like Lancelot and Galahad, these dudes cut dashing figures in their globe-trotting missions to preserve peace and solidarity.  The cream of their crop, Harry Hart (Colin Firth), ranks as their top agent.  He is at his best when he has little more than an umbrella to vanquish the villains.  British actor Colin Firth, who plays the impeccably clad protagonist, has been acting since 1984, but he is known largely as a lightweight leading man in romantic comedies like “Mamma Mia!,” “Shakespeare in Love,” and “Bridget Jones’ Diary.”  In 2007, he ventured out of his comfort zone and played an armor-clad knight in the above-average medieval swashbuckler “The Last Legion.”  During one of Vaughn’s many impressively staged action set-pieces, Firth devastates a hatemongering Westboro-style church congregation in a no-holds-barred, free-for-all fracas. 

As “Kingsman” unfolds, Harry Hart’s closest comrade, Lancelot (Jack Davenport), dies during a mission but saves Harry’s life.  Predictably, Harry consoles Lancelot’s grieving widow and son.  Understandably distraught by her husband’s mysterious demise, Michelle Unwin (Samantha Womack of “Breeders”) wants nothing to do with Kingsman.  Nevertheless, Harry persuades her only son, Eggsy, to accept Lancelot’s medal inscribed with a phone number and a code word should he ever require help.  Seventeen years later, as an underprivileged teen living in the projects, Eggsy finds himself in deep trouble.  Our wild, impulsive hero steals an automobile belonging to a gang of loutish British lads who have been badgering him.  Commandeering their vehicle for a joyride, Eggsy careens through congested London traffic, driving the vehicle in reverse, with the police following him nose to nose, as he executes several complicated maneuvers.  Vaughn excels with suspenseful scenes like this careening car chase.  Later, with nobody to help him, Gary ‘Eggys’ Unwin (newcomer Taron Egerton) contacts Harry.  After Harry gets Eggsy out of the clink, he takes him for a tour of a local tailor’s shop that serves as a front for Kingsman.  Since he feels guilty about the death of Eggys’ dad, Harry helps the lad compete with other candidates for the job-of-a-lifetime as a Kingsman.  After surviving the gauntlet of an incredible obstacle course, Eggys stands poised to become a top agent who can match wits and swap fists with either James Bond or Jason Bourne.  Unfortunately, our hero commits some interesting mistakes before he can redeem himself in the eyes of the Kingsman and save the world. 

Samuel L. Jackson steals the show as goofy looking, Internet billionaire philanthropist Richmond Valentine.  Adopting with a quirky lisp, Jackson wears his baseball cap askew like a gangsta.  Clearly, Valentine represents Jackson’s best performance since “Pulp Fiction.”  Although the tongue-in-cheek Jackson overshadows handsome Harry Hart and his unusual arsenal of weapons, Valentine’s number one henchman--perhaps ‘henchm’am would be better--is a gravity-defying dame equipped with razor-sharp, 'Flex-Foot Cheetah' blade feet, who slices up her adversaries like deli meat.  Nothing can prepare you for Algerian dancer Sofia Boutella of “StreetDance 2” when she performs her breathtaking acrobatic feats in a variation on Oddjob and his razor sharp bowler hat from the Bond groundbreaker “Goldfinger.”  Altogether, “Kingsman: The Secret Service” amounts to amusing but polished nonsense.

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE NEGOTIATOR" (1998)

Summer movies usually lack the sophistication and subtlety of "Set It Off" director F. Gary Gray's "The Negotiator," (*** out of ****)a taut, suspenseful, white-knuckled police thriller that pits "Pulp Fiction's" Samuel L. Jackson against "The Usual Suspects'" Oscar-winner Kevin Spacey. Incredibly, the brain and brawn in Kevin Fox & James DeMonaco's screenplay is evenly matched so that "The Negotiator" scores solidly as an above-average, good cops versus bad cops account of law and order. Nobody in "The Negotiator" does anything that the average human couldn't survive without the services of an agile stunt double. You won't find the kind of outlandish heroics here that occur ostentatiously enough in the "Die Hard" franchise. Indeed, "The Negotiator" stands out as one of the summer's more down-to-earth entries. Actual characters find themselves in plausible situations where they must compete in a deadly contest of wits and wills. Dialogue does matter in "The Negotiator." Nevertheless, despite its onslaught of pyrotechnics at appropriate intervals, "The Negotiator" manages to thrill and entertain without venturing too far out on a limb.

"The Negotiator" focuses on police corruption among a tightly knit coterie of Chicago's finest. Really helpful is the fact that "The Negotiator" originated from an authentic case involving the St. Louis Police. Co-scripted by Fox and DeMonaco (who wrote the Robin Williams fantasy "Jack"), this tense actioneer deals with a falsely accused cop. "The Negotiator" belongs to the police genre where the hero-in-blue must take the law into his own hands to prove his innocence. While "The Negotiator" staunchly adheres to the crime formula, with its shoot-outs constantly interrupting the plot to enliven it, the film boasts enough star charisma and surprises to boost it far above the standard-issue police thriller. Moreover, "The Negotiator" features a line-up of well-versed thespians.

Ace hostage negotiator Danny Roman (Samuel L. Jackson) wakes up one morning and finds himself charged not only with embezzling police pension funds but also for murdering Nathan Roenick (an unbilled Paul Guilfoyle of "Primary Colors") his long-time partner. The filmmakers deserve praise for getting the story off to an early start. Gray and his scenarists provide some informative dialogue about police negotiations and their methods. The lecture on eye language and lying is particularly illuminating and guaranteed to bolster any conversation. Stunned by these accusations, Danny hands in his shield at the request of Chief Al Travis (John Spencer of "The Rock"), his suspicious superior. Once again, Spencer plays a character with villainous shades. Danny's partner's widow curses Danny to his face and Danny's attorney advises his client to cut a deal.

In short, everybody but Danny's newly wed wife, Karen (Regina Taylor of "Lean on Me"), believes that he is guilty as sin. Investigators at Danny's house produce bank accounts of funds invested in off-shore bank accounts. Things look terrible for our hero, but Danny is innocent and we know it. Clearly, someone is trying to frame him. The dramatic tension that fuels "The Negotiator" concerns who is guilty and can Danny survive long enough to prove it. At this point, predictability sets into the Fox & DeMonaco screenplay. All the usual police thriller elements remain intact. No sooner has the heroic cop's pal confided in him about a police conspiracy than he catches lead, and Roman finds himself isolated. Another element of the police movie genre is how a saint like Danny Roman can fall so swiftly.

Refusing to cave in to a neat frame-up, Danny demands to face his accuser, portly Internal Affairs investigator Terrence Niebaum (J.T. Walsh of "Tequila Sunrise"). When a feisty Niebaum repudiates Danny, the outraged Roman takes him hostage, along with Niebaum's secretary, Maggie (Siobahn Fallon of "Krippendorf's Tribe"), and a pasty-faced informer, Rudy (Paul Giamatti of "Saving Private Ryan"), on the 20th floor of the Chicago Internal Affairs Division Headquarters. Chaos erupts. Chief Travis (John Spencer), Commander Adam Beck (David Morse of "The Rock") and Commander Frost (Ron Rifkin of "L.A. Confidential") besiege the building with an army of trigger-happy SWAT cops. David Morse joins the gallery of villains in "The Negotiator." As Commander Beck, Morse joins the gallery of villains in "The Negotiator." He makes quite an impression with is steely eyes and stern manner. Since he has figured out that one or more of his buddies have set him up, Danny demands an outside negotiator.

Enter Lieutenant Chris Sabian (Kevin Spacey), another of Chicago's crack hostage negotiators. Sabian boasts that he has never killed a hostage taker in all his years on the force. Before Sabian confronts Roman, the filmmakers have a little fun with his character. Apparently, Sabian's insubordinate daughter said something that hurt her mother's feelings, and Chris has to talk her out of the bedroom when he receives his call from Travis. The irony (that Sabian cannot get his own wife and daughter to mind him) enriches the storyline when Chris finds himself caught up between Danny and an army of cops that prefer to dispense with questions and shoot first.

At two hours and twenty minutes, "The Negotiator" is a quarter hour too long. Gray could have trimmed twenty minutes without endangering the suspense. Happily, "The Negotiator" gets off to a fast start. The idea of bottling them up in a skyscraper while Danny tries to break Niebaum's resolve qualifies as good stuff. Sadly, the filmmakers come up short. Often the plot stalls out. A big problem with "The Negotiator" is that the filmmakers keep us in the dark about who the villains are. Gray doesn't give up many clues about who they are and deploys some choice red herrings. Basically, we never get to know Danny Roman's friends so that we can guess the identity of his betrayers. Indeed, "The Negotiator" will make you furrow your brows with its plethora of detail. Burn the story about "Shane" into your brain cells if you really want to appreciate the plot. Unquestionably, with "The Negotiator," Gray establishes himself as a helmer of big-action melodramas.

FILM REVIEW OF ''LAKEVIEW TERRACE"

Samuel L. Jackson doesn't know how to give a bad performance, but his choice of movies raises some questions. "Wicker Man" director Neil LeBute's suburban crime thriller "Lakeview Terrace" (* out of ****) qualifies as a predictable, PG-rated melodrama that draws its inspiration from a real-life case of racism where an African-American cop harassed interracial couples in Los Angeles. This disposable,depressing, one-dimensional character study in villainy casts Jackson as a 28-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department who doesn't cotton to his new next door neighbors, a twentysomething interracial couple without a clue. For the record, "Hancock" star Will Smith sank some of his dough into this heavy-handed hokum.

Chris (Patrick Wilson of "Hard Candy") and Lisa Mattson (Kerry Washington of "Ray") have just bought their first house. Chris manages a grocery store and Lisa sits around the house drawing pictures when she isn't forgetting to take her birth control pills. She wants a child to mellow out her racist father Harold Perreau (Ron Glass of "Barney Miller") who didn't approve of her daughter's decision to marry a white bread yuppie. Movies have come a long way since the 1967 classic "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" where Sidney Poitier married a white girl. Ashton Kutcher and Bernie Mac appeared in the abysmal remake "Guess Who" that reversed everything so that white guy Kutcher could wed black girl Zoe Saldana. Everybody got along in these classic as well as less-than-classic movies. No sooner have Chris and Lisa moved in than they aggravate single-parent cop Abel Turner (Samuel L. Jackson of "Pulp Fiction") who doesn't take kindly to their liberal-minded antics.

Abel raises teenager daughter Celia (Regine Nehy of "Pride") and young son Marcus (TV actor Jasihon Fisher) without the benefit of a mother. Abel reveals later to Chris that his wife died in a traffic accident under suspicious circumstances that he hasn't quite reconciled himself to three years later. Abel rules his kids like a tyrant. Not only does he correct Celia's slang-ridden grammar at the breakfast table but he also reprimands her for wearing her iPod every waking moment. Similarly, he doesn't cut Marcus any slack. Not surprisingly, both Celia and Marcus are overjoyed when they get a break from dad to spend time with a relative. Meanwhile, Abel explains to his green, Hispanic partner Javier Villareal (Jay Hernandez of the "Hostel" horror flicks) that he moved his family out of the troubled ghettos where he grew up so that they would have a better life. Abel keeps a tight lid on his patrol area, just as most cops in crime movies do, playing criminals off against other to maintain law and order. Abel has an obese white drug dealer Clarence (Keith Loneker of "Leatherheads") under his thumb and protects Clarence because he serves as an informant.

Abel and the Mattson's get off on the wrong foot. Abel welcomes Chris by pulling a fake carjacking while our protagonist sits in his parked car in his own driveway listening to hip-hop music. Afterward, Abel advises Chris that no matter how loud or how long he plays hip-hop it will never made him black. Chris smokes secretly in his car because Lisa won't let him smoke in their house. He aggravates things when he thumps his cigarette butts on Abel's lawn. Abel's blinding security home lights keep the Mattsons from sleeping since they don't have curtains. Chris talks to Abel but gets nowhere. Things really derail because the Mattson's have a backyard swimming pool that Celia and Marcus would die to swim in but Abel doesn't want them hobnobbing with the neighbors. Anyway, the Abel's kids play peeping toms one evening when Chris and Lisa have sex in their swimming pool. Abel objects to this behavior and the incidents intensify. Our heroes awaken to their car alarm, rush down to their garage, and discover the tires on their sedan have been slashed. Abel discusses the situation with the Los Angeles Sheriff's Deputies who responded to the Mattson's call and a Sheriff's Deputy remarks that they are lucky because they live next door to a cop.

"Lakeview Terrace" shares a lot in common with the paranoid Michael Keaton thriller "Pacific Heights." No matter what our heroes do, Abel beats them to the punch, until his own people—LAPD Internal Affairs—give him the third degree for roughing up a young African-American male, Damon Richards (Jada Pinkett Smith's younger brother Caleeb Pinkett of "Charmed"), who tried to blast Abel with a pump action shotgun during a domestic disturbance at an apartment complex. Internal Affairs investigator Lieutenant Morgada (Eva La Rue of CBS-TV's "C.S.I. Miami") and her colleague warn Abel that they are watching him.

Jackson smolders with rage in this combustible movie because he doesn't approve of a white guy playing house with a black girl. Jackson's performance is about the only thing worth watching because his co-stars barely make an impression as a sympathetic couple that have to contend with his cruel shenanigans. Indeed, the sympathetic couple are pretty boring. Since the bad cop doesn't have a moral leg to stand on, it is just a matter of time until he makes his fatal mistake. In other words, the short-sighted David Loughery and Howard Korder's screenplay boasts few surprises. Loughery's less-than-impressive writing credits include "Money Train" and "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier," while Howard Korder has penned the TV movie "Stealing Sinatra" and "The Passion of Ayn Rand." None of their screenplays have amounted to much so it's no surprise that "Lakeview Terrace" is such a woofer. Basically, neither director Neil LeBute nor his scenarists have brought a shred of imagination to a potentially explosive but superficial saga. If you've seen the trailer for "Lakeview Terrace," you've seen more than enough to know that this objectionable opus is worth neither your time nor your money.