"Lakeview Terrace" is sort of a poor man's "Gran Torino". In "Gran Torino", you have Clint Eastwood's retired "old school" racist who is angry about the non-white family moving next door. In "Lakeview Terrace", you have Samuel L. Jackson's much younger racist cop who is angry about the mixed race couple moving next door. The major difference is that "Gran Torino" is a story of personal redemption and "Lakeview Terrace" presents an unapologetic bad dude in Samule L. Jackson's Abel Turner. Turner is an LAPD cop who becomes enraged when Chris and Lisa Mattson (Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington) move in. Chris is a white businessman and Lisa is his black wife. Right from the start, Turner starts to make their life miserable in subtle and not so subtle ways. It is clearly his intent to drive them out. The movie is a pretty entertaining look at neighbors who just will not get along. Turner's character is given a background story to explain his problem with this couple (which is actually unnecessary and takes away from his character a little, in my opinion: seemed forced). One of the other problems is the couple themselves as they actually give Turner plenty of legitimate reasons to not like them (making love in the pool in full view of Turner's children, tossing cigarette butts over his fence). Sure, his reactions and methods are completely excessive, but making the couple less sympathetic makes the audience care less about what happens to them. This is no tale of redemption as Turner becomes more and more obsessed with driving this couple out and the things he does are more and more extreme, leading to an explosive finale. Samuel L. Jackson is great, as usual, and the rest of the cast is pretty good, too. It is a good, entertaining movie, but not great.Grade: B-
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