Look Review
Look is what you would have gotten if Robert_Altman had limited himself to working with surveillance cameras. That's more a comment on the film's multi-story narrative structure than its quality. But, truth be told, the quality is better than we had any right to expect from a hack like Adam_Rifkin (Detroit_Rock_City), especially when he's executing an ambitious technical gimmick that might have tripped up a seasoned auteur. Look could have actually been sunk by two different questions: 1) Would filming a coherent narrative on only surveillance cameras even be possible? 2) If so, would the cameras' detachment keep the characters at arm's length, reducing our ability to sympathize with them? Rifkin solves both issues satisfactorily. He doesn't cheat on the gimmick, confining the action to mostly public spaces (and one nanny cam), yet he still advances the intertwining stories in believable ways that give the characters sufficient dimension. What's more, he saves his one zoom-in for the moment of greatest possible emotional impact. Rifkin's goal is similar to Paul_Haggis' goal in Crash. Look hits on a variety of hot-button social issues -- sexual harassment, child abduction, statutory rape, terrorism -- around Los Angeles, almost entirely excluding the mundane. Yet this small production is far less bombastic and preachy than the 2005 Best Picture winner. For every mysterious package left on a bus by a Middle Eastern man, there's a convenience store clerk playing goofy music on his synthesizer while his friend slam dances into the potato chip aisle. But Rifkin's biggest success may be his cast of unknowns, who are equal to the pseudo-documentary realism required by the surveillance medium. Look would have been a lot less interesting without the central gimmick, but then again, that's what good gimmicks do -- give standard material an absorbing new twist. Derek Armstrong, Rovi
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