Look

December 2, 2007

Rated: R Runtime: 102 min Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Look is a movie made to look as if it’s shot using nothing but security cameras, a movie that promises to let us peek into the lives of people when they don’t realize they are being watched. Being somewhat of a people-watcher I expected this to be mildly entertaining for a bit and then get rather boring. Boy, was I wrong. From the opening sequence to the end I was glued to this film, utterly enthralled with the stories being told from this unique perspective.

About that opening sequence… the movie starts with a teenage hottie entering a dressing room and taking her top off. In a few minutes her girlfriend joins her and takes her top off (apparently teenage girls don’t wear bras, bless their hearts.) They proceed to have a conversation about bleaching their butt holes and then check to see if either of them needs to have that done. Yeah, this is a FINE way to get a guys attention. Then one of the girls decides to steal a blouse as she puts hers back on over the new one. As they leave the fitting room we follow them through a sequence of security camera shots where we see them get out of the store just in time, and get introduced to a few more characters in this story.

A cashier in the store is asking a manager for assistance with a customer return, and we see him squeezing her butt while he’s talking to the customers. They have a thing going on, but we soon learn she’s not the only girl he’s taking into the storeroom on a regular basis.

We get to watch a couple of guys who work the overnight shift at a gas station, one who wants to be a rock star and the other who just hangs out. We also see a routine traffic stop from the dashboard camera of a police vehicle that turns out to be anything but routine. Businessmen with secret lives, workers who getpranked constantly, security cameras on a bus, security cameras in a high school, nanny cams, and so forth.

What is so ingenious about Look is that you can completely believe you are watching real footage that has been pieced together to tell a story rather than watching a tightly written script that’s being expertly filmed and acted. Every person acting in Look is first rate, down to the people sitting in a mall food court trying to not be seen as a mother frantically looks for her daughter. It’s 100% believable, and it’s brilliant. And like real life security footage, this is just a snapshot in these peoples lives. Don’t expect every story to get wrapped up before the credits roll, life just doesn’t work that way. If I had one complaint it would be the lack of closure on a couple of the story lines, but it’s not bad enough to really bother me.

Look should make you think. When you get up and leave the theater, start noticing how many cameras have been watching you, and think about what would happen if a system were in place to link all those cameras together so that an individual could be tracked from place to place, day to day. There are seven cameras that I know for certain I pass by on my way to and from the office each day, how many are there that I don’t know about? A movie like this could make you paranoid if you let it, and maybe you should…

Posted by John | Filed Under 5 Stars, Adam Bitterman, Drama, Giuseppe Andrews, R, Rachel Vacca, Rhys Coiro, Theatrical, Troy De Walt