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A young successful interracial couple move into a new home in an exclusive California neighborhood. Chris Mattson (Patrick Wilson) and Lisa Mattson (Kerry Washington) are greeted with hostility by their new neighbor, LAPD Sergeant Abel Turner (Samuel L. Jackson), a widower and single father with a son and daughter. Chris and Lisa attempt to be cordial with Abel, inviting him and his family to their home and attending a barbecue Abel throws for some of his fellow officers. Despite this, Abel keeps becoming more disruptive and aggressive to Chris and Lisa. This eventually leads to retaliation on Chris' part and a confrontation with tragic consequences.

This movie despite its racial overtones doesn't break any new ground as a thriller. Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington are a yuppie couple pushed too far and Sam Jackson as Abel is their disturbed neighbor/antagonist who wishes them harm. Definitely nothing new. The acting and script are okay with Sam Jackson's performance easily being the best. The ending is something that can be seen coming a mile away. This film is something you would watch on a slow day if it came on cable.

Seven. Yes, seven. No, I'm not talking about the David Fincher directed thriller, nor am I referring to Samurai, Dwarfs or the lucky number. In this context, seven denotes the number of wince inducing minutes it takes for Lakeview Terrace to throw it all away.

Particular genres of movies tend to have a nasty propensity to ruin their final acts, the foremost of those being thrillers and horror films. May it be an amateur director not knowing how to complete their vision, studio intervention sucking the life from the screen or the commonly occurring revelatory "shocker" ending which tries to jam too many ideas in the viewer's already bleeding sockets. Oddly, director Neil LaBute's latest offering does not succumb to a conventional destructive timeline, but instead opts to cataclysmically implode in literally the final scenes, a feat which few films can boast. Perhaps I am being an iota harsh, as I am recommending this film and the majority of this review will be skewed favourably, but chiefly, my unbounded feelings of contempt towards the finale should stand as a testament to their standalone absurdity which contrasts harshly with the preceding 90 or so minutes.

Samuel L. Jackson has had a vibrant career portraying characters in two spectrums of the acting realm. On one side we have his depictions that can be lumped into the loud-mouthed anti-hero category (Pulp Fiction, Die Hard with a Vengeance, Snakes on a Plane), and on the other, his more nuanced (as nuanced as Sam Jackson can be) roles. (Black Snake Moan, Resurrecting the Champ, Coach Carter) Lakeview Terrace to some extent blurs this boundary, but for the most part Jackson plays his role straight, and he is very good because of it. Jackson plays Abel Turner a veteran, but widowed LAPD officer who lives his daughter Celia (Regine Nehy) and Son Marcus (Jaishon Fisher) on Lakeview Terrace in the hills. He is strict to be sure and his protective nature sometimes obscures the obvious affection for his children. It is touches like this, and similar additions by LaBute that makes his character all the more menacing when the tension later builds, as he is not so much a faceless villain, but a deeply flawed everyman. Despite an encroaching wildfire, things are routine on Lakeview; Abel patrols the neighbourhood at night, loves his job and wants nothing more then to protect his family. Things change however when a new couple move in next door. The fact that husband Chris (Patrick Wilson) wife Lisa (Keri Washington) are interracial is only the fuel for Abel's contempt, and when his children witness a late-night skinny dip by these two newlyweds, the fire erupts and Abel and Chris' lives spiral out of control.

Fashioning Abel as a cop is an intelligent choice, as per the television advertisements indicate, what are they going to do, and who are the authorities going to believe; who will police the police indeed. The tension for the duration is so high, you don't even need a knife to cut it, and a definite sense of dread and menace perforates the narrative. LaBute, truthfully, makes few mistakes, he allows for character development, and as I mentioned not just regarding Chris and Lisa, lets the story develop at a slow burning pace, with the hillside fires mirroring the escalating tempers. The story is also far more insightful and caring then I ever would have anticipated regarding the complicated issue of race and marriage, without feeling shoehorned into the thriller template. As you can clearly discern I have a fairly large amount of admiration for Lakeview Terrace, which brings me to the ending.

Few endings I have seen have represented such a radical shift in tone, and made its characters undertake such ridiculous and uncharacteristic actions then we see here; and I assure you it is jarring. The immediately preceding act, is an iota off kilter with the acts preceding, but does not draw attention and properly illustrates the consequences when things are taken too far in the name of retribution. I was fully under the impression that things were going to end sharply until Abel's character jolts erratically from intelligent saboteur to volcanic lunatic and makes a series of choices that are against both his nature, and what the audience would want to see transpire. Either Abel lost his mind, or the director did. Those who seek out this film in theatres may be disappointed and feel the conclusion somehow managed to bilk them out of their cash like a sneaky pickpocket. LaBute's finale does not so much embody a slap in the face, but a swift hard kick to the groin.

Read all my reviews at Simon Says Movies: http://simonsaysmovies.blogspot.com/

There's an inherent problem with making a movie of this kind: unless you're a creative genius of your time, these sorts of movies have the potential to turn real generic, REAL fast.

Reminiscent of Denzel Washington from Training Day, we see Samuel L. Jackson play an overly aggressive cop with an agenda, with the movie focusing on the problems he's causing for his new neighbors. A completely realistic situation that can take place anywhere. Problem is, because a movie like this is completely character driven, after you have the nice slow build up to the climax, once the tension snaps, you're relegated to basically a generically default final act of the movie where "the bad guy finally comes out of the proverbial shadows and literally chases the hero." (i.e. Disturbia, The Glass House). It's a shame too because the buildup on this was very good. Samuel L. Jackson was really scary here, he played that bullying, obsessive character perfect. The only acting problems I saw were 2-3 moments from Kerry Washington where her sad face was done poorly, with overly done lip quivers and facial movements (similar to Kirsten Dunst's crying scenes from the Spider-Man movies, except done in a BAD way).

With a movie like this, you pretty much have these possible outcomes:

1) the generic, semi-predictable ending (like we got here). 2) tragic ending with hero dying at the end. 3) an unpredictable twist coming out of left field (this has the potential to be very good or very bad). 4) a Great ending.

Unfortunately we usually get number one, since they wanna give the satisfying, safe, effective, tried and true, Hollywood ending. Most people are content with those types of cop out endings. I'm not.

So I have to be brutally honest here, I was mainly looking forward to see "Lakeview Terrace" because I really thought it was going to be awful. And it did look that way to me by the trailers. So I went to laugh at it, but when it started to keep getting better and better, I couldn't really laugh at it anymore. Now not saying that this movie does not have flaws, because IT DOES. But it surprised me with its thematic elements, and really suspenseful scenes. But the cons are that it is a really heavy PG-13 film, and I personally thought they could have made it 10 times better if they had crossed the line into 'R'(which wouldn't have taken much more) and really fleshed out some things that are just hinted at because of their content. And the main con to the film for me was that there was no message at the end of the movie. It just ended, no theme or statement about the story. Just ended without saying "Now the moral of the story is..." So overall I'd recommend this movie to you. The good out-weighs the bad and its really a lot of fun.

If you're a Samuel L. Jackson fan you'll probably watch this movie disregarding a good or bad review. I'm a fan and watched this movie with few expectations and thought it was a good movie worth watching at least once. Sam Jackson did a great job,and the other actors did well in their performances and meshed together really well. There are some great points in the movie that have quite a bit of tension and anger which was put across really well. This is of course not a work of art and has no moral to the story,but not all movies need to teach a lesson. What do you do when a racist,crazed cop lives next door and starts to harass you? I gave it a 6 out of 10. Good film with a decent premise,worth watching.