Lakeview Terrace

Posted on: 12th December 2008  |

Director: Neil LaBute
Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Patrick Wilson, Kerry Washington
UK Release date: 5 December 2008
Certificate: 15 (110 mins)

Some people think that it is a sign of American national maturity when a black man gets to be president in Washington, but maybe it is an even greater sign when a black man gets to be the bad guy in a Hollywood film about racial violence.

Forty-one years ago, Martin Luther King’s gave his Advent sermon about the things in the America of his day which were incompatible with the coming of Christ - the ‘mountains and hills’ of injustice, prejudice, inequality and oppression – needed to be ‘laid low’ by the love of Christ and the dignity of all human persons. He did not expect to get there with us, but he did expect us to get there. And he would certainly now feel vindicated. So that’s all right then.

Well, maybe not entirely. Samuel L Jackson portrays Abel Turner, a Los Angeles cop and single parent, as a huge, almost Shakespearean, tragic villain. Like Othello, he is a man who has given a lifetime of faithful service and almost superhuman courage to a nation of which he feels no part - white America - only to be betrayed (if only in his own mind) by those he has loved the most - his dead wife, his rebellious teenage children, the badge of honour he has worn, the people he has sworn to protect and serve. At work he is a strict, no-nonsense policeman, a man of immense courage, deep compassion, fierce commitment and barely repressed violence. At home he is a strict, no-nonsense father who commits every last effort in the hope that his children can have a better life than he did, growing up in South Central Los Angeles. In both capacities, he embodies the law in the finest traditions of the LAPD and the founding father traditions of the American dream of universal and multiracial prosperity.

But now, there are two fires burning in Southern California. One is the fire that everyone sees - a rampaging brush fire burning out of control and coming implacably and inextinguishably closer to the safe, comfortable houses of the aspiring middle classes. The other is a fire to which most of the inhabitants are oblivious: that of complacent white liberal privilege and the implicit racism it both hides and provokes. That is the fire that is getting higher and closer to everything Abel holds dear. After 28 years of brave and faithful service, he is repaid with a suspension for excessive zeal in attempting to show a gunman the errors of his ways. After three years of single parenthood, his teenage children are rebelling against an authority he can no longer maintain without domestic violence. But most of all, his whole little world is threatened by the moving in next door of a mixed-race couple – Chris Mattson (Patrick Wilson) a white salesman who likes hip-hop and his black wife Lisa (Kerry Washington) who doesn’t. They, more than anything else symbolise for Abel the brave new world of which he does not approve - a life of easy unearned money, modernity, liberality and moral freedom. They crystallise in his mind all the moral hazards that threaten his controlled space and especially his children.

Their first and most flagrant transgression is having sex in their outdoor pool – in full view of Abel’s teenage son and daughter. This, for Abel, epitomises all his jealousies – for their (in his eyes) unearned wealth, youth, opportunity and freedom from the racial and sexual constraints that have confined his own life. He has no Iago outside his own obsessionality. His Shakespearean tragic flaw comes from within. And so, backed with the power of the law, he sets himself to terrorise them out of his neighbourhood.

That leads to another question many white-liberal Americans ask themselves; “who polices the police?” Someone (we are never in serious doubt who) sabotages the couple’s air conditioning, then slashes the tyres of their car. But they can’t prove anything. And as Lisa’s father beautifully puts it: “He has the colour issue on his side…, and in this case that colour happens to be blue.” Chris attempts rather feebly to fight back. And gradually, like Macbeth, Abel becomes the victim of his own paranoia as he alienates his remaining family and friends and the brush fires, like Birnam wood coming to Dunsinane, gradually encircle him.

Throughout, Samuel L Jackson is utterly magnificent and compelling as he switches from smiling charm to predatory menace as fast as the switch on his police issue flashlight, yet not altogether losing the sympathy of the audience – he is no inexplicable psychopath, just a deformed human being we could all become. And like all great tragedies, the tragic outcome is entirely predictable and entirely preventable, not because of the evil of the bad guy, but because of opportunities missed by the good guys. The final course is set when Abel makes one truly genuine attempt to make peace and understanding with Chris and is (understandably, but tragically) rebuffed.

This is an important film because it asks Rodney King’s compelling question “Can't we all just get along?” (caught live on CCTV as he was being battered by racist white LAPD officers) and answers it. And the answer is ‘No’- not until we understand that racism is not the preserve of pre-historic Mid-Western redneck illiterates but is a common deformed human response to fear and disappointment. Like other forms of Original Sin, it is a universal human phenomenon that cuts through all human hearts. All have sinned and fallen short of the Kingdom. And if we are all to get along, then that takes a little repentance in all of us.

Prepare ye the way of the Lord.
Make straight His paths.
There are still mountains and hills to be laid low.



Paul O?Reilly SJ



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Lakeview Terrace - In Theaters September 19th

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