Lakeview Terrace (2008)

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

Lakeview Terrace is a very poor movie with a dull storyline and an overall uninspired cast.Samuel L. Jackson does a great job and will always be an outstanding actor,but he still wasn't enough to make this movie decent,the only scenes that I really liked were when we got to see his character working for the LAPD,which we saw very little of.Kerry Washington did the best she could with the character she was given,sadly it was a boring character that lacked any interesting personality traits,but I found Patrick Wilson's character very annoying,he wouldn't stick up to Jackson's character and couldn't defend his own household and I found the character unlikeable.Lakeview Terrace is a really slow and mediocre movie that I think people would be better off avoiding.A racist veteran LAPD cop starts a violent campaign of intimidation and harassment against his new neighbours because of their interracial relationship. Best Performance: Samuel L. Jackson Worst Performance: Patrick Wilson

It contains quite a punch does Lakeview Terrace, propelled by Samuel L. Jackson in a meaty lead role as a racist black cop with white issues, it is for the most part a riveting thriller. Jackson is Abel Turner, a single parent police officer raising two kids, he's stressed out, easily annoyed and his method of parenting and policing is leading him down the road to hell. So when inter-racial couple Chris (Patrick Wilson) and Lisa Mattson (Kerry Washington) move in next door, Abel tips over the edge and becomes the bad cop neighbour from hell.Director Neil LaBute (In the Company of Men) and his lead actors ensure the story doesn't become insulting to racial matters, both of relationships and of colour hatred, but after a great first two thirds of build up it, it then lacks the courage of its convictions, where taking the easy way out leaves a frustrating taste in the mouth.It's still a viable and very watchable thriller, it just isn't bold enough come the finale. 6/10

This movie is actullay turned out to be pretty watchable. I went into it with low expectations and I was pleasantly surprised. It of course has its flaws. The whole premise of the story is kind of unbelievable. Though if you take your head out of it and just enjoy it is quite good.This movie is about an interracial couple that move in to a house next door to a cop. This cop is an apparent bigot and does not like the fact that the white man is with a black lady. Right away he starts harrasing them and the harassment just keeps getting more extreme.Like I said if you tend to not think about movies much as you watch them by all means this will be a great watch the acting is above par for sure and there is some good scenes. If you are like me and think

For years, Hollywood has tended to shy away from the sensitive subject of racially mixed marriages, but in recent years there have been signs that the taboo has been weakening. "Mirrors", for example, featured a racially mixed couple, and "Lakeview Terrace", another film from 2008, is an "issue" movie centred upon that very theme. (In both films the husband is white and the wife black; Hollywood still seems reluctant to make films dealing with the opposite situation, which is in fact statistically more common in real life).The film takes its title from a racially mixed middle-class neighbourhood in Los Angeles. The central characters are a young interracial couple, Chris and Lisa Mattson, and their next-door neighbour Abel Turner, a black officer with the LAPD, with whom they have a tense, uneasy relationship which soon degenerates into open hostility.The film starts off as an examination of two conflicting lifestyles. Abel, a widowed father of two young children, is considerably older than the Mattsons and is more politically and socially conservative; he is, for example, sceptical about global warming and keen to defend the police against allegations of brutality. He is a strict father, something shown by the way in which he constant corrects his children whenever they make a grammatical error. Chris and Lisa, by contrast, are more cosmopolitan and liberal; it is ironic that Chris, the young white professional, is a fan of hip hop music, generally regarded as the music of working-class urban blacks.Abel is sometimes described as a racist, but his is a specialised form of racism. He is not prejudiced against white people per se; he is happy to live in a racially mixed area, and would have no objection to living next door to an all-white couple, especially if they shared his social attitudes. He does, however, object to mixed marriages, and this is one of the reasons why he dislikes Chris and Lisa. This attitude may derive from an incident in his past. He was widowed when his wife was killed in a road accident alongside her white boss, with whom he believes (possibly incorrectly) she was having an affair.In the second half of the film it turns into an example of what I have come to regard as the "…… from Hell" movie. The basic premise of such films is that the life of the protagonist is turned upside-down by the arrival of a stranger who initially seems friendly but who quickly turns out to be dangerous. (This sub-genre of the thriller enjoyed great popularity in the late eighties and early nineties following the success of "Fatal Attraction", or "One Night Stand from Hell"). In this case it is Abel who is the villain and Chris and Lisa his victims; they may have to some extend provoked him, but his behaviour degenerates from the merely unneighbourly to the criminal to the murderous.I have given Lakeview Terrace a relatively high mark because of the original way in which its ideas are developed in the first part of the film and because of the quality of the acting, especially from Samuel L. Jackson as Abel, or at least the Abel of the early scenes. He is portrayed as a proud man, one with a short temper, but a loving if strict father, doing his best to get his kids off to a good start in life, and Jackson is able to bring out all these facets of his character, as well as hinting at the possible latent violence underlying the surface.Nevertheless it was in my view unfortunate that the scriptwriters and director Neil LaBute allowed the film to turn into a "….from Hell" movie, because the first half is actually much more interesting. Abel might end up as the neighbour from Hell, but at first he himself has several legitimate causes of complaint about the behaviour of the Mattsons. (They have been making love in their outdoor swimming-pool, in full view of Abel's children, and Chris has been flicking cigarette butts over his fence). By slavishly following the conventions of the conventional suspense thriller, the film loses the opportunity to examined the little-explored phenomenon of black conservatism and the way in which it conflicts with the cosmopolitan liberalism of many- both black and white- in the younger generation. It would appear that in Hollywood it is still OK to make a black man the villain, provided that he is sufficiently reactionary to offend against the canons of political correctness. A more conciliatory or nuanced ending might have made for a more interesting film. 7/10