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he Lookout, an efficiently suspenseful caper propelled by deep, wrenching emotions, is anything but your average heist flick with a twist. It's a solidly directed thriller that showcases crackerjack acting and delivers some minor pleasures.

The Lookout starts off with an accident. Former high school athlete Chris Pratt (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is driving his girl, his friend and his friend’s date to a high school party, when a horrific accident destroys the lives of all four. Chris suffers a horrible brain injury and (fast forward three years) he is encountering trouble rebuilding his life. He’s essentially a functioning invalid, dependent on a pocket notebook to help him to remember the simplest daily things. Otherwise, he splits his time between rehabilitative life-skills classes, a dead-end janitorial job, and sharing an apartment with a wisecracking blind man (Jeff Daniels).

One day at a bar, Chris encounters a charismatic thug, Gary (Matthew Goode, "Match Point") who befriends him and enters his life by claiming to be an old high school acquaintance. This drastically alters the landscape, as Chris feels somewhat essential again. Situations turn sticky when Gary and his stripper friend Luvlee Lemons (Isla Fisher, of Wedding Crashers) intend to rob the bank where Chris works as a janitor; they seduce him into acting as a lookout.

Suffering from crippling lapses in both memory and impulse control, the vulnerable Chris leaves behind his blind roommate (Jeff Daniels) and soon finds himself knee-deep in a plot that could potentially offer him an escape from his hardships. But instead, Pratt’s involvement leads him on a downward spiral into a world of gangsters and shootouts with the cops.